Board of Directors

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Biographies

Dr. Nancy Gibbs moved to California in the early 1980s and joined Physicians for Social Responsibility shortly thereafter; she joined PSR-LA’s board of directors in 1999 and currently serves as Board President. Dr. Gibbs’ social conscience was formed growing-up in south Chicago during the turbulent years of the civil rights struggle. She attended Michigan State University for undergraduate studies and Loyola-Chicago for medical school where she specialized in family practice. She performed her residency at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Gibbs works at Kaiser Permanente-Baldwin Park in family practice and geriatrics with additional appointments at Glendale Adventist and Westside Neighborhood Clinic. “PSR-Los Angeles is the only organization I know,” Dr. Gibbs said, “that is paying attention to the nuclear threat in an active way. I really appreciate PSR’s perspective on war – how we diagnose war as it affects people’s health. And I like the way PSR frames the issues of the day through the health prism – whether it is the nuclear threat or gun violence or environmental issues. Every day we physicians see people who have been impacted by environmental toxins, such as dirty air impacting patients’ COPD. For this reason, we have a great opportunity to provide education to the public, to legislators, and to physicians who may not realize their medical training has given them a way to think about social issues in an entirely new way.”

Dr. Jimmy Hara has served on the PSR-LA Board of Directors since 1981, including service as Chapter President for 15 years and now Vice President. He has served on the National PSR Board as Pacific Regional Director and has been active with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). He is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Residency Director Emeritus for the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Family Medicine Residency after having served 25 years as Residency Director.

Dr. Hara is the Lead Physician for Community Benefit for Kaiser Permanente Southern California. He chairs the California Healthcare Workforce Policy Commission for the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and serves on the Board of Trustees for the Health Professions Education Foundation for the State of California. He has volunteered regularly at the Venice Family Clinic, Saban Free Clinic, Asian Pacific Health Care Venture, UCLA Mobile Clinic, and UCLA Salvation Army Homeless Shelters. He currently serves as Venice Family Clinic Board Chair. Two years ago he launched the Southern California Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Program that affords opportunities for health professional students to provide service to medically underserved communities. He is Medical Co-Director and Chair of their Advisory Board. Doctor Hara’s wife and two sons were start to finish participants of the Great Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament in 1985.

Tova Fuller

Tova Fuller is one of two national student representatives for Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). She is a 6th year MSTP (joint MD and PhD) student at the University of California, Los Angeles obtaining her PhD in Computational Genetics; she also has received a BS in Cybernetics and an MS in Biomedical Engineering. Tova currently serves as one of two National Student Representatives to the PSR National Board of Directors, the PSR Security Committee, and the PSR Social Justice Committee. She also the secretary of the PSR-LA board of directors, a member of the PSR-LA Peace and Security Ambassador Program, and is webmaster for the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) Students website (http://www.ippnw-students.org/). Along with her national student representative partners, she has helped organize two Student PSR conferences, which focused on war and health, climate change, nuclear abolition, and other topics.

She has lectured on the Medical Consequences of the Iraq War for an upper division Sociology course at UC Santa Barbara. During the summer of 2006, Tova joined students around the globe in the IPPNW Baltic Bike Tour, a 1000 km bicycle trip through Estonia, Russia, and Finland with the goal of educating citizens and politicians about nuclear weapons and advocating a nuclear weapon-free Europe. Among other events, the bikers participated in “Target X” installations in Estonia and Finland, advocated for nuclear abolition in meetings with the head of the Green Party in Estonia, Finnish Mayors for Peace, and Finnish members of parliament.

Dr. Jose Quiroga is a cardiologist and co-founder and director of medical services at the Program for Torture Victims (PTV). He serves on the board of PSR National and PSR-LA. He also serves as a vice-president of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT).

Dr. Quiroga worked as a personal physician to a Chilean president, Salvador Allende, before fleeing Chile after the coup d’état in 1973. On September 11, 1973, CIA-backed Chilean military army, led by General Augusto Pinochet, launched a coup against the democratically elected Unidad Popular Government of Salvador Allende. A team of doctors including José Quiroga and a few officials were the only ones to stay with the president at the palace La Moneda. Dr. Quiroga left Chile with his family in 1977 after increasing harassment and threats under the Pinochet regime, and secured a position at UCLA as an associate researcher in public health. He soon began working in close collaboration with a refugee from Argentina, psychologist Ana Deutsch. Together, they co-founded the Program for Torture Victim (PTV) in 1980, and Dr. Quiroga established a medical arm of the program at Venice Family Clinic.

Dr. Quiroga says his previous experiences have exposed him to human rights issues and that “It is not enough to be a practicing physician for money.” Dr. Quiroga urges doctors to get involved in the community and politics of one’s country to impact and to make change in the society. In 2008, his leadership was instrumental in helping PSR-LA successfully pass state legislation condemning medical professionals who participate in torture.

Dr. Neal Baer is Executive Producer of the NBC television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and has served on the PSR-LA board of directors since 2004. Prior to his work on SVU, Dr. Baer was Executive Producer of the NBC series ER. A member of the show’s original staff and a writer and producer on the series for seven seasons, he was nominated for five Emmys as a producer. He is presently writing and producing a six-hour mini-series for HBO on the world AIDS pandemic and the plight of AIDS orphans with Sir Elton John executive producing.

Dr. Baer graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed his internship in Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles. He received the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Scholarship from the American Medical Association as the most outstanding medical student who has contributed to promoting a better understanding of medicine in the media. The American Association for the Advancement of Science selected him as a Mass Media Fellow.

Dr. Baer’s primary medical interests are in adolescent health. He has written extensively for teens on health issues for Scholastic Magazine, covering such topics as teen pregnancy, AIDS, drug and alcohol abuse, and nutrition. Recently, Dr. Baer co-established the Institute for Photographic Empowerment at USC’s Annenberg School of Communications, which links photographic story-telling projects around the world and makes that work available to NGOs and policymakers. Dr. Baer has received numerous awards for his public service efforts in both the entertainment industry and the global health and human rights community.

Dr. L. Stephen Coles is a Co-Founder and Director of the Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group and Director of the Supercentenarian Research Foundation. He is a member of the board of directors of PSR-LA, and has been a member of the organizations since 1980. He served as an Assistant Researcher in the Department of Surgery at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and is currently a Visiting Scholar in the UCLA Department of Computer Science.

Dr. Coles is the author of over 132 scientific papers and holds two patents. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, his Master’s in Mathematics from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in Systems and Communication Sciences from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After attending Stanford University Medical School, Dr. Coles completed his Clinical Internship in OB/GYN at the Jackson Memorial Hospital of the University of Miami School of Medicine. After teaching at UC Berkeley, Dr. Coles served as a Lecturer at UCLA, USC, and CalTech. Recently, the Age Management Medicine Group (AMMG) awarded Dr. Coles with the 2008 Alan P. Mintz, M.D. Award for Clinical Excellence in Age Management Medicine. The award is presented annually to a physician who exemplifies Dr. Mintz’s vision of clinical excellence in patient care, healthy living, quality of life and entrepreneurship in Age Management Medicine.

Dr. Robert Dodge is a family practice physician in Ventura, California. He became active in the peace movement as a college student at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the 1970′s where he majored in molecular, cellular and developmental biology. He went on to receive his M.D. at the University of California at Irvine and completed his residency in Family Medicine at Ventura County Medical Center. Dr. Dodge became active with Beyond War’s Ventura group in the 80′s, and currently sits on the board and serves as a voting member of the renewed international Beyond War group. Since 1985, he has been the president of Ventura County Physicians for Social Responsibility and is an active board member of PSR LA. In 2002, following the release of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review which advocated policies that could ignite a renewed global nuclear arms race, he began Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions (www.C-P-R.net) as a grassroots coalition. Dr. Dodge currently serves as the group’s co-chairman. He frequently speaks and write on issues related to nuclear security and global sustainability and is a firm believer that the individual can make a difference if only they will. His motivation and inspiration has always come from the people he loves. He is the father of three sons and married to Joan Dodge, a school counselor.

Jim Mangia is the President and CEO of St. John’s Well Child and Family Center. Mangia has strong and sustainable partnerships with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), First 5 LA, community based organizations, schools, and health care providers to increase access to health care services and youth development programs and strengthen the healthcare safety net for impoverished children and their families. Mangia has worked with LAUSD schools to establish on-site school-based clinic programs to provide health care services to children and families-in-need. Mangia is a member of the Board of Governors of L.A. Care Health Plans and of the Board of Directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He also serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County (CCALAC) and is a founding member and sits on the Board of Directors of the Southside Coalition of Community Health Centers.

Mangia has testified before congressional committees, the California state legislature and the Los Angeles city council about environmental health issues. He is a co-author of the white paper: Slum Housing, L.A.’s Hidden Health Crisis, which outlines the effect of slum housing on the health of children and the negative impact it has on childhood lead poisoning and asthma prevalence. He has received the Certificate of Congressional Recognition, special recognition in the U.S. Congressional Record, and numerous commendations for his work by city, county and state legislative bodies.

Dr. Margaret Wacker joined the board of directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles in 2006. Her commitment to peacemaking has very deep roots — During the second world war Dr Wacker’s parents were among the leading scientists in Washington DC. Her chemist mother led the government’s effort to create synthetic rubber, and her father, a theoretical physicist, worked on the Manhattan Project and later helped develop military radar. Margaret attended the University of Colorado as an undergraduate where she studied economics and Russian. In the 1970’s, she relocated to Seattle, attending the University of Washington, where she received advanced degrees in physics and bioengineering, and later a medical degree. From 1982-1989, Margaret performed her residency in brain surgery at Loma Linda University, and, later, a fellowship in neuro-oncology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Wacker worked from 1993 to 2000, at King-Drew Medical Center. Here she witnessed the unabated horror of gun violence. King-Drew sees three thousand trauma incidents per year, half of which are penetrating wounds, knife and gun-shot wounds. In the 1990’s Margaret worked with the Los Angeles County Violence Prevention Coalition, Handgun Control and Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles. She spoke at press conferences and testified before city councils. Dr. Wacker is currently a surgeon at Kaiser-Permanente in Fontana. She regularly travels into Los Angeles to participate in PSR programs.