Physicians for Human Rights
Using science and medicine to stop human rights violationsColeen Kivlahan MD, MSPH
I have been a family medicine physician for more than 25 years. I am an avid volunteer with PHR in the Asylum Network both as a trainer and medical evaluator.
I have spent many years providing child sexual and physical abuse evaluations and established the SAFE Network (Sexual Assault Forensic Evaluation) in Missouri in 1984 to increase access to professional evaluations. I also began the Child Fatality Review Project to review all unexplained child deaths. I continue to provide rape evaluations for women of all ages and torture evaluations for asylum-seeking clients.
My training includes undergraduate studies at St. Louis University, medical school at Medical College of Oho at Toledo, family medicine residency at the University of Missouri and Robert Wood Johnson fellowship, achieving my MSPH at the University of Missouri. I have worked in public health settings, academic health centers, state and county government, and in international settings such as Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Haiti, Colombia, and Congo DRC. I lead a Medicaid medical policy unit as Chief Medical Officer for Aetna Medicaid and practice in Herndon, VA with an immigrant population providing care for their complex diabetes and hypertension.
Performing almost 200 asylum examinations since 2002 has integrated all my professional skills and personal beliefs: forensic science, primary care, international human rights, advocacy, access to health care, and serving as a translator for the human stories told at the most vulnerable times in people’s lives. My most memorable moment was when an asylum applicant from Ethiopia told me “I was created to survive.” PHR’s mission to promote human rights in ways that help people survive and thrive motivates me every day.
>> Read PHR's Summer/Fall 2011 Newsletter, featuring Dr. Kivlahan.
Blog Posts by Coleen Kivlahan MD, MSPH
- Standing With Our Courageous and Visionary Colleagues in the DRC (October 26, 2012)
- We Are All Connected (February 13, 2012)
- It Takes a Network to End Mass Rape (February 9, 2012)
Articles & Opinion Pieces by Coleen Kivlahan MD, MSPH
- Why treating rape survivors is so complicated, Women's Media Center/Women Under Siege (February 1, 2013)
