2026 MCG class president makes history as a Pisacano Scholar

A fourth-year student at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University has made school history as the first student to be named a Pisacano Scholar – a highly coveted scholarship program for medical students seeking to practice family medicine. 

Ana-Sophia Chung, class president for the MCG Class of 2026, learned earlier this year that she was being honored. 

“I was so excited because I’ve had all of these leadership opportunities over the last four years, and I worked so hard to be really involved with community service,” Chung said. “I just feel like this honors all that work.” 

The Pisacano Leadership Program, named in honor of Nicholas J. Pisacano, MD, a family medicine physician who championed the specialty, is awarded to medical students who meet certain leadership and academic criteria. It allows them to participate in symposia and educational programs and provides them with mentorship from current family medicine doctors. 

It also gives them an annual scholarship of $5,000 during their final year of medical school and their first three years of residency. Chung is one of only 10 students from across the country to be named a 2025 scholar and the only current scholar from a school in Georgia. 

Kathryn Martin, PhD, a close mentor to Chung, originally encouraged her to apply for the scholarship and wrote a letter of recommendation, believing wholeheartedly that she embodies everything the award is meant to represent. 

“I had no idea how competitive this was, but when I read the application and saw what they were looking for, I thought that it’s exactly who she is,” said Martin, associate dean for the regional campuses of MCG. “It’s a win-win. For her, for the exposure, opportunity and the financial support she’ll receive, but it’s also a big deal for us.”  

Chung initially wanted to go into pediatrics when she started medical school, but when she was going through her third-year medical rotations, she realized she loved the broad scope and continuity of care that family medicine allowed her to do. 

“That’s what family medicine is – you take care of people from birth to the grave,” she said. “There’s really no limitations to what you can do. It’s just a matter of what you choose to train in. This is a specialty where I get continuity of care. I love getting to know patients, I love getting to know about their family, what they love to do. I get to know them and take care of them for a long time.” 

Family medicine falls under primary care – an occupation that is suffering a nationwide shortage of physicians that is only expected to grow. Reasons for this include an aging population and workforce, physician burnout and lower compensation, according to the Bureau of Health Workforce. 

All of this adds up to passionate family medicine doctors being needed now more than ever. 

“She has chosen family medicine as a specialty because she recognizes the importance of caring for people who are underserved who don’t necessarily have another route to obtain care,” said Jennifer Tucker, MD, associate dean for Student Affairs at MCG, associate professor of emergency medicine and assistant professor of pediatrics. “I think that she could have done whatever she wanted, but I think she chose family medicine because she thought it was the right thing to do.” 

Chung’s journey to becoming a family medicine doctor began when she was born into a family with a natural inclination to help others. 

“My parents both served in the medical field in the Air Force. My mom was a respiratory therapist, and my dad was an ultrasound tech,” she said. “They both moved on from those jobs by the time I was born, but my whole life I grew up hearing about their times in the medical field and how they wish they could have gone back to it.” 

Her parents’ love for medicine inspired Chung and her two brothers, who are now both doctors, to follow in their footsteps. 

It started with Chung volunteering with children’s charities in high school, which led to her joining UGA Miracle, a club affiliated with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, while an undergraduate student at the University of Georgia. 

“In the role I had there, I got to work very closely with families who had a loved one that was being treated at CHOA – they were called Miracle Children,” she said. “Then I started volunteering inside the hospital when I was at UGA. So I knew I wanted to help people from a very young age; it was just ramping up at that point.” 

After she graduated with honors with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in Spanish, Chung went on to work as a medical scribe in Texas for a year before going to medical school. She said about 80% of the patients the clinic served were Spanish-speaking. 

“Since my mom is from Nicaragua, she raised me speaking Spanish, and so I was hearing these patient encounters in Spanish and then having to transcribe them in English for the medical records,” she said. “In that way, I got to see how vulnerable populations were treated in the medical field. Being Spanish-speaking in the United States isn’t necessarily an easy thing when it comes to getting medical care. And now, one of my biggest goals is to be a doctor who serves Spanish-speaking communities.” 

When it came time to apply for medical school, Chung felt like it was a given for her to attend MCG.

“My older brother went to the MCG Athens campus, and when he would be studying in small groups, they would sometimes invite me to go sit with them. I got to see their mannequins, the patient beds they used for their simulated physical exams and stuff like that,” she said. “Seeing him go through MCG and have such a great experience, I think just really solidified it for me, and I knew I wanted to stay in Georgia.” 

Since attending MCG, Chung has immersed herself in almost every extracurricular offering and leadership opportunity that comes with being a medical student. 

Not only is she class president, but she’s also a student delegate for the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians, executive vice president of the Gold Humanism Honor Society and representative in the AAMC Organization of Student Representatives. 

She’s volunteered at MCG’s free clinics, coordinated a health fair, planned the annual Body Donor Memorial Service, tutored children in the community and, to top it all off, she and her classmates formed a volleyball team named the “Set-o-Scopes.”

“I wear MCG on my sleeve; it’s like part of my family. I think being class president allowed me to get really close with faculty and administration here, and so I felt a lot of support from them throughout the years,” she said. “My medical education has been amazing. I’ve seen the most interesting cases you can see in a hospital because we are located in an area where we have such a large expanse of patients that we cover. We get to treat really interesting cases, do research on those cases and form connections with patients.”

Tucker and Martin wrote letters of recommendation for Chung for the scholarship, emphasizing her leadership and volunteer experience. 

“As someone who has watched her since she started here and became class president, she’s weathered a lot, and I think that she has done a really good job of representing her class and representing her school,” Tucker said. “When she started here, we were still dealing with COVID, we also had a hurricane and a snowstorm. She’s dealt with things other class presidents haven’t had to, and she’s been a mouthpiece for her classmates and any concerns they have.” 

Chung currently works as a pediatric anesthesia extern at Wellstar MCG Health, where she performs anesthesia tech and PACU tech roles. Although she won’t have much exposure to the operating room as a family medicine doctor, she knows her training here will benefit her when she’s serving her future patients. 

“I think having those experiences will allow me to comfort my patients in an outpatient setting, being able to inform them of what it looks like from start to finish,” she said. “In the role I have now, I’m the person who takes the patient to the operating room and then rolls them out to their car or up to their hospital room. I get to see them from start to finish, which is really cool.” 

Anthony Daniels, MD, an assistant professor of internal medicine at AU, was the attending physician for Chung’s sub-internship in the Family Medicine Inpatient Service rotation at Wellstar MCG Health. 

“From the first impression, she was already performing at a very high level, and she kept improving as the rotation went on,” he said. “She was as well-prepared as a resident intern would be to present her patients. She took ownership of them, but she also would talk to consulting services and social workers on her own – she did all the things you would expect a resident intern to do.” 

Daniels explained how impressed he was that Chung was able to excel in her duties as a sub-intern while balancing good grades and her leadership roles, and that it wasn’t surprising for her to be named a Pisacano Scholar. 

He hopes that she will continue to use her skill set to advocate for the family medicine profession. 

“Having someone like Ana-Sophia is important because we have lobbying bodies in family medicine that are big voices when it comes to vaccine mandates, getting Medicaid reimbursement, getting Medicare reimbursement and helping policy makers in Washington, D.C.,” Daniels said. “Any time we see students or residents who want to go that route, we really encourage it. That type of leadership within the specialty could have huge implications on not just the Augusta area, not just Georgia, but the United States as a whole.” 

Chung graduates in the spring, and although it’s unknown where she’ll complete her residency, she’s determined to be an impactful addition to the family medicine specialty, and she’ll be able to use the resources the Pisacano Scholarship has given her to achieve her goals. 

“My partner and I hope to match at a program together – I’ll be practicing family medicine, and he’ll be practicing pediatrics,” she said. “In a broader scope of things, I hope to serve vulnerable populations, specifically Spanish-speaking people, and also advocate for my patients in health policy.”