Sarah Cairo, MD MPH, is a graduate of the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign where she received bother her Bachelor of Science in Spanish and Molecular and Cellular Biology. She then received her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. During that time she also received her Masters in Public Health with experiences focused on both domestic issues of infection control and sexual health in the criminal justice system and international issues of human trafficking and women’s health. She completed a general surgery residency at Maine Medical Center in Portland, ME during which she took a two-year research sabbatical at the University of Buffalo, Oishei Children’s Hospital. During that time she published extensively in the areas of health services research, transitions in care for pediatric surgical patients, and global surgery. She received grants for her work in surgical education and global health, specifically in answering the question of pediatric surgical capacity in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Following her residency in Maine and research in New York, she matched into the Pediatric Surgery fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, TX. While here, she has led a busy team of pediatric surgeons and advanced practice providers in the care of complex surgical patients. Dr. Cairo will be joining the pediatric surgery faculty at the University of California San Francisco in the fall where she will continue to care of children with a wide breadth of pediatric surgery conditions. In addition to caring for children with common pediatric pathology, Dr. Cairo has fostered a keen interest in issues of access to care.

Stemming from her Masters in Public Health and global health experiences in Nicaragua, Cambodia, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dr. Cairo has a passion for health as human rights and global surgery. She has worked with international groups including Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery and the Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children in these efforts. In addition to caring for children with a variety of surgical pathology across San Francisco and Oakland, Dr. Cairo will join Dr. Ozgediz in his efforts with the UCSF Center for Global Surgery and Health Equity.