Ben Brown
Director, Integrative Medicine Fellowship

Dr. Brown graduated from UCSF medical school in 1992 and from the family medicine residency program in Santa Rosa in 1995. While in medical school he founded and directed an international non-profit (planet care/ghap www.ghap.org) to help serve the refugees along the Thai-Burma border and has done more then 20 medical missions to the area.

Following residency, he worked as a rural family doctor in Point Reyes, CA, where in addition to doing full spectrum family medicine, he started a community wellness program. During these 6 years he also worked with Dean Ornish MD and the Program for Reversing Heart Disease as one of the lead doctors on the life-style educational retreats.

In 2001 he took a sabbatical year to study Ayurveda, became board certified in Holistic Medicine, wrote articles on wellness, cultural medicine, life-style change and began to translate the vast information in the many healing and wisdom traditions into a principle- based system of care.

In 2002, he became the Medical Director for Southwest Community Health Center and then Chief Medical Officer as they grew from one to five clinics and grew their patient visits by more then 500% in 5 years. He was a founding member of the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency Consortium. He became part of the residency faculty in 2007 and is the director of global medicine and integrative medicine.

His passions in medicine are health care for the underserved, principle based medicine (taking the best for this client from the variety of integrative options), global medicine, resident wellness, delivery system design, supporting and creating positive transformational change, and Simple Wellness: easy ways to help people find fulfillment, change behavior and maintain health or become healthy. His passions outside medicine are almost anything outdoors: Biking, Hiking, Skiing, Mountain Retreats; Laughing with his daughter Shayla, Juggling, Woodcarving, Writing, Photography, Music, Cartooning, and living in the now.

Wendy Kohatsu
Director, Integrative Medicine Fellowship

Wendy Kohatsu, M.D. received her medical degree from UCLA in 1994, and completed her residency in family and community medicine at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital. She graduated as one of the inaugural fellows in the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, under the direction of Dr. Andrew Weil in 1999.

She has served on the faculty at East Tennessee State University, working with a rural, underserved community, and then as Co-Director for the Integrative Family Medicine Fellowship at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Kohatsu’s interests are the integration of primary care with nutrition, lifestyle enhancement, mind-body therapies, and complementary and alternative therapies such as botanical and manual medicine. She is the editor and author of the book Complementary and Alternative Medicine Secrets, published in 2002.

Dr Kohatsu also received her professional culinary degree from the Oregon Culinary Institute in 2008 and teaches healthy cooking classes at local wellness centers, national conferences, and in the humble space of her home kitchen for friends. Dr. Kohatsu’s dream is to create an interactive TEACHING KITCHEN to cook with, educate, and inspire people to not only eat healthier, but to use food as medicine, and savor life.

She is thrilled to serve as Director of the Integrative Medicine Fellowship at the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency program in Santa Rosa, CA.

Fasih A. Hameed, MD
Assistant Clinical Professor, UCSF
Fellow, Integrative Medicine

Dr. Hameed graduated from Brown University in 2001 and received his MD from Tulane University in 2005. His Family Medicine residency was completed in Santa Rosa in 2008. During residency he organized an Integrative Medicine task force which subsequently successfully introduced a curriculum, clinic and fellowship to the residency. He is the first Integrative Medicine Fellow at the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency. His specific areas of interest and specialization include Acupuncture, Nutritional Medicine, Mind-Body, and Herbal Medicine. Self-care activities include surfing, yoga, mindfulness meditation, chi gong, climbing, hiking, poetry, music and art.