Council of Young Filipinx Americans in Medicine
Board of Directors
Antonio Moya, MD, MPH
(He/Him/His)
Co-Founder and Executive Chair
Antonio Moya, MD MPH is a Board Certified Neurologist, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and LA County Department of Health Services Scholar working at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center. Antonio co-founded the Council of Young Filipino Americans in Medicine (CYFAM) in 2019.
He completed his neurology residency at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Prior to residency, he graduated from the UCSF School of Medicine as a PRIME-US Scholar and also completed his MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health with a focus on Global Health in Asia.
He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in the Philippines before medical school, specifically working on establishing telemedicine stroke care in this archipelago nation of more than 7,000 islands. Antonio has primarily focused on the Filipino and Asian Pacific Islander global community, having served as one of the past medical directors of the UCSF Student-Run Clinic Mabuhay Center and Director of the UCSF Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association. Antonio has partnered in Los Angeles with the Filipino American Service Group Inc. (FASGI), having been awarded multiple community and national grants to leverage media tools to improve health behaviors related to stroke and other non-communicable diseases.
Career Interests: Dr. Moya is interested in stroke prevention and treatment among under-resourced communities, telemedicine to facilitate neurology care and referrals, and Asian Pacific Islander immigrant health disparities.
Research Interests: Dr. Moya is interested in using qualitative research methods to understand stroke and health disparities. He uses research as a means of advocating for the disaggregation of data among Asian subgroups. He also focuses on telemedicine as a platform to increase neurology care for immigrant, non-English speaking patients.
Angelico Razon, MD, MPH, MSHP
(He/Him/His)
Co-Founder and Operations Chair
Dr. Angelico Razon is a post-doctoral fellow in the National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include patient- and community-centered system design and policy interventions to promote patient self-efficacy and address social determinants of health. His research focuses on transitions of care, especially with how Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) access the healthcare services as they develop into adults.
After completing his undergraduate degree at Harvard College, he served as the Nonprofit Management Fellow at the Phillips Brooks House Association, a student-run nonprofit human service organization serving youth and communities in the Greater Boston Area. Afterward, he attended the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California through PRIME, a dual degree program focused on leadership in underserved and vulnerable communities. He pursued a Masters of Public Health in Healthcare Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where he also received the Zuckerman Fellowship for interdisciplinary work in public service. Dr. Razon completed Combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency at the University of Michigan.
Allen Siapno
(He/Him/His)
Secretary Chair
Allen Siapno is a medical student in the Charles R. Drew University (CDU)/UCLA Medical Education Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) at UCLA. He is currently on leave from the MD program as part of a research fellowship through the Dean's Leadership in Health and Science Scholarship. His research studies are focused on improving survivorship care in men with prostate cancer and evaluating innovative methods to increase healthcare access in Southern California. He has served as a co-leader for Filipino Americans in Medicine (FAIM) where he established mentorship programs and boosted the medical training pipeline for Pilipinos for Community Health (PCH) at UCLA. He has also served as a student delegate to the California Medical Association (CMA) and American Medical Association (AMA) from the CDU/DGSOM chapter.
As an immigrant from the Philippines, he considers Sta. Ignacia, Tarlac, where he spent his childhood, and Fontana, California, where his family currently resides, as his two hometowns. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a double major in Molecular & Cell Biology and South & Southeast Asian Studies. During his time at Berkeley, he was involved in the Pilipino Association for Health Careers and the Pilipinx community at Cal. He attributes his passion for social justice and equity in medicine to his involvement in these spaces. After college, he returned to Fontana, California and spent 3 "gap years," volunteering as a Health Scholar at the Kaiser Permanente Riverside Medical Center and working as a medical scribe at the Riverside Community Hospital.
Lester Uy
(He/Him/His)
Financial Chair
Lester Andrew Uy is a pre-medical and pre-law student attending a post-baccalaureate health program at California State University, East Bay (CSUEB). Before the health program, he obtained a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) with a concentration in Accounting and a Legal Studies Certificate from the University of San Francisco (USF) in 2017. He is passionate about examining the inadequacies in the intersection of business, law, and medicine and improving those systems to serve marginalized communities better. Currently, he serves as Founder and President for the CSUEB Pre-Med Chapter of the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association (APAMSA). He also serves as a Founding Board Member for the USF Pride Alumni Association.
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Previous work and experience include legislative research, immigration law and immigrant advocacy, public and governmental auditing, and volunteering at various not-for-profit social welfare organizations. Having served as a Senior Assurance Associate at PwC, LLP, with a focus on financial markets and not-for-profit and government entities, he has extensive knowledge on technical accounting and audit issues concerning the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (U.S. GAAP), Internal Revenue Code (IRC), State and Local Tax (SALT) Codes, and State Not-For-Profit regulations. He firmly believes that having cross-disciplinary knowledge provides the essential foundation for building a resilient community. At CYFAM, he hopes to support the organization's efforts in strengthening the critical financial processes required to execute its mission. He also wishes to bridge the financial literacy gap for persons without a business background.
Executive Physician Committee
Jasmin Reyes Moncada, MD, MS, MPP
Chief Engagement Chair
Jasmin Reyes Moncada, MD MS MPP is an OB/GYN chief resident (PGY-4) at the University of Hawaii. She earned her bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley, Masters of Science from San Francisco State University, Masters of Public Policy from UCLA Luskin School of Public Policy, and medical degree from David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA through PRIME-LA. Her hometown is Carson, CA.
Why did you choose the University of Hawaii to do your training?
Because it is an academic program with a community feel. I am rigorously challenged in an intimate environment where my attendings care about me both as a person and colleague. I also want to serve the underserved, and we at UH actually “walk the walk and talk the talk”. Our UH attendings staff our local FQHCs and our program fosters a strong spirit of social justice.
What’s the best thing about being a resident at the University of Hawaii?
Within 10 minutes from my home, I can be watching the sunset at the beach with my 3 year old son and husband after a long day at work.
Katrina Heyrana, MD, PhD
Chief Engagement Chair
Dr. Heyrana is an OB/GYN and family planning fellow at LAC+USC in Los Angeles. She completed a combined MD/PhD program at Penn State, where she studied structural retrovirology and developed an interest in how vulnerable populations make complex medical decisions. During her OB/GYN residency at the University of Rochester, she developed a locally-focused social determinants of health curriculum incorporating reproductive justice (RJ) principles into patient care. She currently provides general OB/GYN care, complex contraceptive services, and abortion care to patients in LA County. Her research employs an RJ framework to explore the interplay between acculturation and the reproductive health needs of different AAPI populations, with a focus on Filipinx communities.
Carlos Oronce, MD, MPH, MSc
(He/Him/His)
Chief Research and Education Chair
Carlos Irwin A. Oronce, MD, MPH is a general internist and a fellow in the VA Advanced Health Services Research Fellowship at the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in health policy and management as a fellow in the Specialty Training and Advanced Research Fellowship at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He received his MD and MPH from Tulane University, completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and is a recent graduate of the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program. His work focuses on the role of the health system in improving population health, advancing health equity, and delivering better value in care. His research spans racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes and quality of care, evaluating the impact of interventions to address health-related social needs and social determinants, and understanding the impact of value-based models of care for underresourced patient populations and communities.
Melissa Palma, MD, MPH
(She/Her/Hers)
Chief Research and Education Chair
Geno Tai, MD, MBA
(He/Him/His)
Chief Mentorship Chair
Nicolo Cabrera, MD
(He/Him/His)
Chief IMG Chair
Nico is a graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine. He came to the US for Internal Medicine residency at John H. Stroger Hospital of Cook County in Chicago where he was chief resident. He did fellowship training in Infectious Disease in the Immunocompromised Track of University of Texas jointly with MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He is now a fellow in Immunocompromised Host/Transplant Infectious Disease in Stanford University.
Denise Gabrielle Alcasid Sese, MD
(She/Her/Hers)
Chief IMG Chair
Dr. Sese is an assistant professor from the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. She recently finished her fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio and was chief resident of internal medicine at Cleveland Clinic Akron General. She is currently practicing as a pulmonary hypertension specialist at MUSC and has a special interest in palliative care. She has been a member of the UPMASA Ohio (Medical Alumni Association of UPCM) and she got involved with CYFAM through Dr. Tony Moya who is a long time friend of hers. She hopes to improve access to resources for the filipino international medical graduates.
