background image
Robert Wood Johnson
I
MEDICINE 45
professional, well poised, bright, hard-
working, and organized. She already
had a child at that point, and I was
quite impressed at her ability to bal-
ance her home and medical life."
At the medical school, Dr. Flash
and some of her classmates started the
Homeless and Indigent Population
Health Outreach Project (HIPHOP)
to help the poorest residents in New
Brunswick. During her residency in
internal medicine and pediatrics at
Brown University and a fellowship in
adult infectious diseases at Harvard
University, Dr. Flash found that her
time at Robert Wood Johnson Med-
ical School served her well.
"I can remember going to my resi-
dency alongside people who had gone
to more well-known medical schools
but feeling incredibly well prepared,"
she says. "Even now, I still talk about
Robert Wood Johnson. We had a `sex
week' curriculum, where you talk
about sexually transmitted infections
and sexual gender minorities; that
kind of training created the founda-
tion for what I am doing now.
"Most doctors aren't even comfort-
able taking a sexual history, and at
Robert Wood we had an entire week,"
she adds. "The experiences with
HIPHOP and Elijah's Soup Kitchen,
where we would recruit them to come
in from around the corner, that idea
of bringing care to where people are,
and the power of touch--all of that I
got at Robert Wood. It was fantastic."
Her determination to speak openly
with patients led Dr. Flash to start an
HIV prevention program in 2012,
shortly after moving to Texas. "You
have to have something more to give
patients than, `You should have used
a condom,' and `come back in three
months,'" she says. Dr. Flash works
to ensure patients' health by prescrib-
ing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP),
and she views her current situation as
an opportunity: "There are very few
places in the U.S. where you can pro-
vide primary care to large numbers of
people with HIV."
Between working with underserved
communities, overseeing medical stu-
dents making rounds, and speaking at
international conferences for physicians
specializing in AIDS, what does Dr.
Flash do to relax or for hobbies?
--Continued on page 50
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

C
H
A
R
L
E
N
E

F
L
A
S
H
,

M
D

'
0
6