Natania Bloch

Hub Referrals Coordinator

Before joining Transitions Clinic Network, Natania worked in various non-profit spheres, including addiction medicine, environmental conservation, and social services. Since early in her career, Natania has been passionate about uplifting underserved communities, especially within the healthcare system. She is eager to join TCN as a program assistant to support people impacted by incarceration and help fulfill their healthcare needs. Raised in the foothills of Boulder, she graduated from the University of Colorado with degrees in History and Jewish Studies. She now lives in San Francisco with her 2-year-old puppy, Artemis. In her free time, she enjoys roller-skating, reading, and searching for the best coffee shops that San Francisco has to offer.

Joseph Calderon

Senior Community Health Worker

Joseph Calderon, Senior Community Health Worker. Joe is a native of San Francisco and a certified community health worker (CHW). At the age of 23 he started serving a life sentence. After nearly 20 years incarcerated, he began to explore ways to give back to society upon his release. He currently works as a Lead CHW and Trainer at the Transitions Clinic Network, a national organization dedicated to improving health and reentry outcomes for those returning to the community from incarceration. Joe trains and mentors CHWs with histories of incarceration who are employed by TCN programs nationwide. Joe was an appointee to the San Francisco Reentry Council from 2013-2016 and now serves on the Policy and Procedure Sub-Committee. He also served on the Equity Advisory Committee with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. In 2017 the San Francisco Department of Health appointed Joe to the SF LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) Policy Committee.  He has a passion for working with diverse and disenfranchised populations, leveraging his personal experience with incarceration to advocate for social justice and community investment. Mr. Calderon has a Post-Prison Community Health Worker certificate from San Francisco City College and plans on continuing his education in public health. Joe completed a JustLeadershipUSA fellowship in 2018.

Bethany Divakaran, RN

Nurse Program Manager

Beth is a public health nurse with extensive experience in organizational and system transformation aimed at addressing the social determinants of health. She leads the Transitions Clinic Network Reentry Healthcare Hub and works closely with CDCR nursing staff to ensure care coordination from state prison to primary care clinics across California. Beth has a doctorate in public health nursing (DNP) and master's degree in public health (MPH) from the University of Minnesota. She has worked as a nurse leader across hospital, clinic, and governmental settings and has taught nursing students at the University of Minnesota and Concordia University-St. Paul.

Sharon Fennix

Hotline Coordinator

Sharon Fennix is the Transitions Clinic Network Hotline Coordinator. Her passion for transforming the health system to better meet the needs of individuals returning from incarceration comes from her lived experience of serving38 years in prison. While incarcerated, she completed several educational and vocational programs, including college coursework, training to become a certified optician and certified dental technician, and training to become a substance use disorder counselor, and for several decades Sharon has worked to support individuals that have been impacted by trauma, domestic violence, substance use, and mental health conditions. She is thrilled to be part of the TCN team, and particularly enjoys working with men and women who have lived experience to help other returning community members.

Morgan Gliedman

Communications Manager

Prior to joining the Transitions Clinic Network as Communications Manager, Morgan worked in the public health and harm reduction fields. She has led, developed, and launched numerous educational initiatives, including multimedia overdose prevention and reversal materials, a video series aimed at combatting stigma and promoting best practices among medical providers, trauma-informed care trainings for practitioners working with justice-involved populations, and toolkits translating the brain science of addiction into digestible, accessible formats. She is deeply committed to engaging impacted community members and centering lived experience; in Baltimore City, she convened multiple community events as well as listening sessions with people who use drugs for the FDA and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) patient-focused drug development initiative. Morgan has served on NIDA’s Clinical Trials Network Steering Committee and as an expert participant for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) “Use of Medication Assisted Treatment in Emergency Departments” evidence-based resource guide development. Morgan graduated from New York University with a concentration in creative writing and is earning her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has written about her family's experiences with the criminal legal system in The Washington Post, Vox, and The Fix.

Tressa Hillman

Community Health Worker, Valley Homeless Healthcare Program, San Jose

Tressa Hillman is a Community Health Worker for Santa Clara County. She has lived experience and serves as a medical and social liaison for recently incarcerated individuals with high-risk for homelessness. Tressa's goal is to improve linkage to medical care, reduce recidivism and hospitalizations, while improving quality of life. She makes connections by treating each person with dignity and respect.

Clemens Hong, MD, MPH

Co-Founder

Clemens S. Hong, M.D., M.P.H., co-founded the Transitions Clinic with Dr. Emily Wang in San Francisco in 2006. He went on to teach for several years at Harvard Medical School, and joined Massachusetts General Hospital as a primary care general internist and health services researcher. Dr. Hong is the Co-Founder of Anansi Health, and currently serves as Director of Community Programs at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, where he oversees multiple County programs, including Housing for Health, the Office of Diversion and Reentry, Whole Person Care, My Health LA, CalAIM, and COVID-19 Testing.  Dr. Hong received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Washington and his Master’s Degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. He went on to complete internal medicine training in the San Francisco General Hospital Primary Care Program at UCSF, as well as a general medicine fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

Alex Morales

Program Assistant

Alex Morales is the TCN Program Assistant at Southeast Family Health Center. In his previous role, he was the Food Access Coordinator and a COVID-19 Responder serving with National Health Corps San Francisco and is now working at Southeast helping maintain the clinic flow. Alex hopes to continue working with the community and aide in removing barriers that prevent individuals from accessing healthcare.

Shira Shavit, MD

Executive Director, Transitions Clinic Network

Shira Shavit, MD is a Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California in San Francisco and the Executive Director of the Transitions Clinic Network. For nearly two decades, Dr. Shavit has been redefining national best practices for the care for chronically-ill individuals and communities impacted by mass incarceration. Under her leadership, the TCN Model grew from the flagship program in San Francisco, where she continues to treat patients, to 48 health systems nationwide. In California, Dr. Shavit oversees a statewide network of 21 primary care systems that proved instrumental in supporting the increased number of individuals releasing from prison during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her team's efforts have resulted in 10,000 people with chronic conditions receiving coordinated care from all prisons statewide to community health systems, a historic first in the state.  In addition to providing clinical care to people returning from incarceration, Dr. Shavit has provided technical assistance to numerous counties and states to improve health outcomes, cut health care costs, and support healthy integration of individuals reentering their communities. She has also served as an expert consultant to reform healthcare systems in the California State prisons in collaboration with the Federal Receivership (2006-2011). Dr. Shavit graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, completed her MD at Rush University in Chicago, and completed her residency training at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leader Award (2010), completed a CHCF Health Care Leadership Fellowship (2022), and was recently recognized with a UCSF Chancellor's Award for Public Service (2022). Additionally, she is a member of the California Department of Health Care Services CalAIM Justice-Involved Initiative Stakeholder Group. 

Anna Steiner, MPH, MSW

Program Manager, Transitions Clinic Network

Anna Steiner, MSW, MPH, Program Manager. Before joining TCN as Program Manager, Anna served as Program Advisor for the Office of Viral of Hepatitis Prevention at the California Department of Public Health. Throughout her career, she has worked to promote health equity and build capacity among those facing systematic and institutional barriers to accessing health care, including people who use drugs, formerly incarcerated and homeless individuals.

Arlinda Timmons-Love

Community Health Worker, Reentry Health Hotline

Presently Arlinda is an “African American Reentry Health Conductor” for Contra Costa County Department of Reducing Health Disparities in Partnership with Center for Human Development African American Health Conductor Program. She works with formerly incarcerated men & women who are returning home, back to their communities; making sure if they have any hereditary chronic illnesses they will get Obama Care, as well as jobs & other resources the federal government has set aside for them. Being an advocate for those who can’t speak the language they left 20 to 30 years ago, understand the language they’re returning to. Arlinda also works at the WCHC in the Transitions Network Clinic, a Specialty Clinic that only treat the needs of the formerly incarcerated targeted population. Arlinda lost her 15yr old son to gun violence, and in 2004 she founded “Women of New Birth” a nonprofit organization working with women who lost their children to gun violence. In 1999 Arlinda became a Neighborhood Change Agent under City of Richmond Mayor Gale McLaughlin, whom started a city organization to fight gun violence called “ONS” Office of Neighborhood Safety, advocating & working with young men ages 13yrs old to 29yrs old who police targeted as “shooters”, to turn their lives around. She worked with these men from all areas of Richmond and the yearly murder rate dropped tremendously due to her tenacity in making sure another mother would not have to feel the pain of losing her child. Arlinda still remains with the ONS Program as a Peace Keeper, is actively enrolled in CCSF Community Health Worker Program, certified with Yale’s National Institutes of Health Office of Extramural Research, Administrative Justice graduate, facilitate 52 week court mandated batterer class, anger management facilitator & has numerous letters of appreciation, certificates and awards. But the most valuable award I get is from the people I help in the communities I serve with the needed resource they need, and just being a light in the community to them.

Emily Wang, MD, MAS

Co-Founder & Director of Research

Emily Wang, MD, MAS is a physician, researcher, and nationally recognized expert on the health impacts of incarceration. Her commitment to studying and eliminating health care access inequities began when she was a medical student volunteering in domestic and international prisons. In 2006, during her residency at UCSF, she co-founded with Dr. Clemens Hong the flagship TCN program at Southeast Health Center—this program, and the innovative model of enhanced primary care for returning community members that Dr. Wang co-created, have flourished into the Transitions Clinic Network.   In 2008, Dr. Wang joined the Yale School of Medicine, where she is a professor of general medicine and public health. She went on to become the founding director of the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice, a collaboration between Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School. She leads the Center's research program, the Health Justice Lab, which receives National Institutes of Health funding to investigate how incarceration influences chronic health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and opioid use disorder. SEICHE and the Transitions Clinic Network collaborate closely on research, analysis, and evaluation. Dr. Wang’s pioneering research has demonstrated the evidence-based efficacy of the patient-centered TCN Model of care, as well as the importance of participatory approaches to partner with impacted individuals with lived experience. This research has been instrumental in growing the network nationally.   Dr. Wang received her BA from Harvard University, MD from Duke University School of Medicine, and MAS from the University of California at San Francisco. She co-chaired the National Academy of Sciences’ consensus report on “Decarcerating Correctional Facilities During COVID-19” and serves on the World Health Organization’s Health in Prisons Programme Steering Committee. She has been named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Community Advisory Board

The Community Advisory Board (CAB) engages current and former clients in program planning, evaluation, policy matters, and health and wellness activities, furthering TCN’s ability to provide care that enhances the health and well-being of individuals returning from incarceration, while providing impacted individuals with opportunities to gain leadership experience that can be translated to employment and other professional opportunities.   

• Alicia Nolan
• Aminah Elster
• Fredie Burmen
• Jabari Jackson
• Johnny Lewis
• Gary Ramsey
• Nilda Palacios
• Rickie Blue-Sky
• Rosemary Dyer

The Community Advisory Board at a virtual convening in February 2021 (below) and at Southeast Health Center in San Francisco (top left).