Board
Nancy Lapolla, MPH - President
Nancy Lapolla has over 20 years of experience in public health. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Community Health and a Masters degree in Public Health. Ms. Lapolla has been with the Santa Barbara County EMS Agency since 1994, and served as the EMS Agency Director since May 1998. As a Director, Ms. Lapolla has overall responsibility for emergency medical services system; providing leadership for the EMS staff and the broader EMS system. As President of the Board of Directors of DWW-SBSM Ms. Lapolla provides oversight and guidance to the direction and programs of this organization.
Father Jon Stephen Hedges, EMT-B, BCCC, CTR
- Vice President
Fr. Jon is is a founding Board Member of Doctors Without Walls/ Santa Barbara Street Medicine. An Orthodox priest, he serves as volunteer Chaplain with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department, the Isla Vista Foot Patrol and several other agencies. Fr. Jon is a Board Certified Crisis Chaplain with the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress and Certified Trauma Responder (CTR) with the Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists, he also trained as an Emergency Medical Technician (NREMT-B). Fr. Jon serves in many other capacities as an emergency responder including Chaplain and EMT with the Santa Barbara County MRC. He has also collaborated and consulted with several Santa Barbara County agencies on crisis and disaster mental health issues and is a trained member of the national Red Cross Spiritual Response Team (SRT). Fr. Jon was deployed by Red Cross to Louisiana early in September of 2005 after Hurricane Katrina as a Disaster Mental Health worker and was requested for detached service by the Louisiana State Sheriff’s Association to work on the streets with the New Orleans Police and other responders before Red Cross was cleared to enter the city. He has been called on in many occasions to work side-by-side with first responders in many crisis situations.
Marguerite Sanchez - Secretary/Treasurer
Marguerite, Financial Analyst, is Secretary/Treasurer of DWW-SBSM. She is responsible for the implementation of new legislation and subsequent collection of fees and fines for Santa Barbara County Superior Court. Ms. Sanchez began her career as a staff accountant with Bartlett, Pringle and Wolf. She was the Accounting Manager for Minicars, Inc., the developer of the automotive airbag and passive restraint seat belts, a Controller for a publicly traded automotive design studio, working with such companies as Ford, Chrysler, Jeep and McLaren Racing and lastly was Controller for a publicly traded Internet company (NASDAQ). Ms. Sanchez resides in Santa Barbara, California.
Jason Prystowsky, MD, MPH – Interim Medical Director
Jason Prystowsky attended University of California at Santa Barbara where he studied both philosophy and biology. He then went on to get a medical degree and public health degree at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. Jason trained in emergency medicine at Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA, where he served as chief resident and a faculty member while doing an ethics fellowship. Jason spent 2 years as the medical director of the medical student run Open Door Community’s Harriet Tubman Free Clinic. After leaving Emory University, he worked on both the Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona, and on the Rosebud Indian reservation in South Dakota. In the global arena, Jason has worked in Uganda, Haiti, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Antarctica, and worked for Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders in Sudan doing nutrition, vaccination campaigns, obstetrics, TB, kala-azar, tropical medicine, and surgical trauma. Jason most recently worked in the West Bank with Loma Linda University and USAID, helping the Palestinian ministry of health develop emergency healthcare infrastructure, disaster preparedness, and train emergency physicians and nurses. Jason embraces the Doctors Without Borders tradition of temoignage and speaks out about what he and other MSF volunteers have seen as doctors. He shares the stories of triumph and challenge about the clinical and public health impact of social injustice, poverty, and social inequalities. Jason is currently clinical faculty in emergency medicine at Loma Linda University in addition to being an emergency physician at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. He is adjunct faculty at University of California at Santa Barbara and is co-instructor of DWW-SBSM annual UCSB underserved medicine course. He currently is the team leader for the DWW-SBSM communications and the interim medical director.
