In May 2009, RFHC Physician Assistant,  Margaret Allen,  received the coveted American Academy of Physician Assistants’ 2009 Service to the Underserved Award.

Allen has cared for the health needs of multicultural communities for nearly two decades.  With a strong commitment to team work, she helps the elderly, troubled teens, new immigrants, and the homeless.

She wants patients to leave feeling better than whey they came in. It’s something she learned from her father, a general practitioner in her native England. As a young girl, she went on house calls with him. “We would go from our home in a grimy dock town to, where downtrodden people in poor health were living in hard situations,” she says. “He always had this huge cheerful personality that the patients adored.”

Margaret has gained her own following among RFHC patients, particularly seniors at Belle Haven Clinic where she is the lead clinician and among the homeless that she treats on our mobile clinic.  She is also a volunteer teacher at the Stanford Primary Care Associate Program where the students twice voted her “Teacher of the Year.”

Read her story in “Life Long Calling” and “Care for the Underserved”  in PA Professional, June 2009