Providing Care and Making an Impact

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 Dana Hall Bulletin.

In the relatively short time since her Dana Hall graduation Sophia Geffen ’09 has covered a lot of territory — geographically and academically, but also in her contributions to the larger community. Along the way, she has developed her skills and stayed true to a personal passion for addressing health inequities that she first realized while she was a Dana Hall student. This year’s Distinguished Young Alumna honoree has already, as the Award description reads, “demonstrated outstanding distinction by giving back to her community, providing an inspiring role model for students,” and her trajectory suggests that perhaps her greatest impact is yet to come.

Not all alumnae can draw a direct line between their current vocation and their time at Dana Hall, but Geffen can. “During high school, I volunteered with the AMIGOS program, which was introduced to me by my classmate Rebecca Joseph ’09 and her mom,” Geffen recalled. “It really changed my life in a lot of ways. I lived with families in the Dominican Republic and Panama during two summers, and saw the starkness of health inequities for the first time.” She also became interested in the work of Dr. Paul Farmer and Partners In Health (PIH), and was able to connect with that organization when PIH physician Dr. Evan Lyon visited Dana Hall as a Wannamaker Speaker. Geffen then ramped up her activities at Pomona College, where she was a public policy analysis major with a focus on global health. She worked as an HIV testing counselor and peer educator and did a study-abroad program in community health in Botswana for a semester. She launched her career working primarily in LGBTQ health, adolescent health, and sexual health, on projects ranging from HIV prevention research to equity education programs for health professionals. She also earned a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Geffen always knew she also wanted clinical experience, but she was not entirely sure what specific role would be the best fit. “I did a lot of research that was looking at the holes in health care for underserved communities, mostly LGBTQ adolescents and LGBTQ people of color. I had a lot of ideas about how the healthcare system could work differently for marginalized populations, but I had never done it, and I wanted to better understand how to address these issues as a clinician,” she said. She is quick to note that her decision to become a nurse was not an information-gathering mission. “I had done some research that found that school nurses served a particularly poignant role in young queer and trans people’s lives,” she explained. “Folks end up spending a lot of time in the school nurse’s office and confiding in school nurses. I really want to do something like that, where I could help during this transformative time when young adults and teenagers are forming their identities and developing their health-related behaviors that they will establish for the rest of their lives.” After completing her nursing training at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, Geffen began the job she currently holds — registered nurse in the pediatric emergency department at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

But she is not finished yet. Geffen is the recipient of a Leonard A. Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Fellowship. She is training to become a family nurse practitioner, so she can serve as her patients’ primary care provider. Geffen is scheduled to complete her training in December. “In my work in the emergency department, I see where the holes are in primary care, when people are using the emergency room as their only option to access care due to lack of insurance or lack of engagement after experiencing discrimination in healthcare settings.”

In the short term, Geffen wants to work as a nurse practitioner and primarily provide gender affirming care for adolescents and young adults. “I want to be delivering care that allows people to be the best versions of themselves. That’s one of the things I feel most passionate about,” she said. “I want to focus for the next few years on just becoming a really good primary care provider.” Beyond that, Geffen is setting her long-term ambitions on systemic change. “There’s such a disheartening and scary number of anti-transgender bills popping up around the United States right now. Trans people, and also people who provide gender affirming care, are under a significant threat,” Geffen noted. “I also would like to be involved in some way in contributing to policy and advocating for a single-payer health care system, where everyone has access, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status.” With her passion for public health and her commitment to clinical care, Geffen seems highly suited to take on these complex issues and whatever else comes her way.

“I have been really hard on myself from time to time about how everything’s fitting into the vision of what I saw for myself or the person I want to be in the world,” she admitted. “It can be hard to maintain your moral compass. But that can be expressed through all the things that you do, and there’s lots of opportunities to contribute. If you can find the thing that you really love doing, it becomes a lot easier and better for the long haul of being able to sustain that work.”