Faculty
Our faculty bring an exceptional breadth of experience and talents to the FMR program. Our physicians are board certified in family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, and addiction medicine. They have completed fellowships in geriatrics, maternal child health, and tropical health, and master’s degrees in public health, business administration, and theology. Several have worked in training programs and direct patient care in countries throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. The Director of our Mobile Health Team was named Illinois Family Physician of the Year.
What brings such an exceptional group of people together? A commitment to practicing medicine as a mission to serve “the least of these”, and to equip others to do the same.
Benjamin Preyss, MD, MBA // Program Director ▼
Undergraduate: University of Chicago
Medical School: University of Illinois College of Medicine
Residency: Northwestern McGaw (Humboldt Park)
MBA: University of Illinois at Chicago
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As Program Director, Dr. Preyss provides day-to-day leadership, mentoring, teaching, and administrative oversight to our residents, faculty, and program staff. He has worked in various leadership roles at LCHC for the last nine years, and is the founding Program Director of the Lawndale FMR. His professional interests include addiction medicine, team-based care for "high-risk"/vulnerable patients, and training the next generation of family physician leaders.
A former Schweitzer Fellow, Pisacano Scholar, member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society, and graduate of an original Teaching Health Center program, Dr. Preyss is dually boarded in Family Medicine (ABFM) and Addiction Medicine (ABPM) and also serves as LCHC’s Medical Director of Recovery Services.
His wife, Alia, is an OB/GYN physician at LCHC and also faculty in the Lawndale FMR, and together they share the great joy of raising three young boys. He loves all things sporting and movie-going.
Elizabeth Redican, DO // Associate Program Director ▼
Undergraduate: Lipscomb University
Medical School: Des Moines University, College of Osteopathic Medicine
Residency: Ventura County Medical Center
Fellowship: Maternal Child Health, West Suburban Medical Center
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As Associate Program Director, Dr. Redican spearheads much of the program’s curriculum and is responsible for the resident training experience in our partner hospitals. Dr. Redican practices full spectrum family medicine, caring for patients in the clinic and hospital in obstetrics and adult medicine, and providing maternity and infant care through LCHC's Centering groups.
Dr. Redican was first drawn to medicine with a dream of working internationally, and spent a year helping and visiting medical missionaries after completing her residency. She continued her training in high risk obstetrical care by completing a MCH Fellowship at West Suburban Hospital. God unexpectedly opened her heart for training up the next generation of medical providers, urban medicine, and a newfound love for West Side Chicago.
Outside of medicine, you can find Dr. Redican on the dance floor, mentoring youth in Chicago through “GRIP”, tending to her garden, hosting prayer meetings, spending time with her four roommates, and visiting the suburbs often to love on her nieces and nephews.
Casey Clardy, PHD, MDIV // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Samford University
School of Psychology: Fuller Theological Seminary
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Dr. Clardy is the rotation supervisor for Behavioral Health, and provides leadership to LCHC’s Behavioral Health and Population Health teams. She is passionate about teaching residents and mental health trainees how to address behavioral health and substance use needs of high risk populations chronically unengaged in the healthcare system, from a distinctly Christian perspective. As a community-based clinical psychologist, Dr. Clardy has dedicated her career to the intersection of psychology and faith in service of underserved populations. She is fluent in Spanish.
Dr. Clardy has also served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at her alma mater, Fuller Theological Seminary, where she earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology and Masters of Divinity. She has conducted research and consultation in international settings, and has co-authored books, chapters, and articles on adolescent spiritual development and thriving in cross-cultural contexts. She serves on the Board of Directors for Christian Community Health Fellowship (CCHF), and is a past recipient of the Outstanding Contributions to the Primary Care Behavioral Health Model award from the national Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA).
She lives in Oak Park with her dog Riley, and enjoys traveling, singing, cycling, and camping.
TARA DEJESUS, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Columbia University
Medical School: Rush Medical College
Residency: Cook County Hospital
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Dr. deJesus is a pediatrician who supervises residents on both their inpatient and outpatient pediatric rotations. She also serves as the faculty director for the resident advisor program, and as the faculty advisor of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion resident workgroup.
Dr. deJesus graduated from Rush Medical College in 1999 and completed her pediatrics residency at Cook County Hospital in 2003. She sees patients at LCHC clinics in East Garfield and North Lawndale, as well as newborns and inpatient pediatric patients at Mount Sinai and Saint Anthony Hospitals. Her clinical interests include general pediatrics, newborn visits, pediatric obesity, and anticipatory guidance.
Having grown up in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Florida, Dr. deJesus is fluent in spoken and written Spanish. Dr deJesus lives in Garfield Park, where she and her family also enjoy Broadway musicals, board games, puzzles and karaoke. She is also a faithful participant in the Let’s Move, Lawndale! weekly walking group and the LCFit Staff Wellness Book Club.
Wayne Detmer, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Yale University
Medical School: University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine
Residency: University of Cincinnati
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Dr. Detmer has worked at Lawndale Christian Health Center since 1999 and was promoted to Chief Clinical Officer of Operations in 2001. Dr. Detmer has been a coach and advisor to hundreds of interns and medical students, working with our residents in their Chief Rotation during PGY3, and providing teaching and mentoring on the OB floor. He has a particular interest and wisdom when it comes to exploring how faith should inform our practice of medicine.
Dr. “D” lives in South Lawndale with his wife, Gina, who is a pediatrician at LCHC. They have four incredible children.
Kara Greeley, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Mount Holyoke College
Medical School: University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine
Residency: Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
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Dr. Greeley is the rotation supervisor for Maternal Child Health and is one of our primary clinic preceptors and OB attendings, having previously served as Director of Maternal Child Health for LCHC for ten years. She provides maternity and infant care through Centering groups, and provides holistic care for multi-generational immigrant families at Farragut Career Academy, where patients are seen both from the community and the high school, and where she also serves as the Site Medical Director. Dr. Greeley has taken call on Labor and Delivery throughout her career, during which she enjoys teaching and mentoring students and young physicians to provide excellent and compassionate maternity care.
Dr. Greeley has lived in the South Lawndale community for over two decades with her husband, Siri, and family, who always keep it an exciting place with her three boys, one girl, two cats, and rambunctious dog. She has found that living in the same community as her patients has given her insight into the strengths and challenges of life in their neighborhood, and creates a deeper bond with them.
MICAH CHOI HONG, DO // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Medical School: Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine
Residency: Advocate Christ Medical Center
Fellowship: Maternal Child Health Surgical Obstetrics, West Suburban Medical Center
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Dr. Choi Hong is faculty with emphasis on precepting continuity clinic as well as inpatient on the Maternal Child Health service. She provides full spectrum family medicine in the outpatient setting and deliveries babies as part of LCHC’s obstetrics team in the hospital.
Dr. Choi Hong graduated from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2015 and completed her family medicine residency at Advocate Christ Medical Center in 2018.
Dr. Choi Hong loves the outdoors, including camping (even in the winter), hiking, biking, and traveling with her husband Stephen. She also likes to go on long walks with her dog Gabriel, to do innovative cooking, and to learn from failures on how to care for plants.
Florence Hsiao, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Princeton University
Medical School: Yale School of Medicine
Residency: University of Cincinnati/Christ Hospital
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Dr. Hsiao is core faculty working with residents in clinic and inpatient on their Maternal Child Health rotations. She was introduced to Lawndale through her husband, Daniel, who is also a doctor at Lawndale and who did an internship at Lawndale after college.
Dr. Hsiao has particular interests in maternity care, women's health, point-of-care ultrasound, and care for underserved populations both locally and abroad.
Dr. Hsiao graduated from Yale School of Medicine in 2019 and completed her family medicine residency at the University of Cincinnati/Christ Hospital program in 2022. She completed a one year global health fellowship after residency in rural Guatemala, with a focus on maternity care and point-of-care ultrasound.
Thomas Huggett, MD, MPH // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: University of Wisconsin - Madison
Medical School: University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine
Residency: University of Missouri-Columbia
MPH: Johns Hopkins University
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Dr. Huggett currently serves as Medical Director of Mobile Health at LCHC, leading a team of healthcare providers providing full spectrum family medicine to 12 homeless shelters. Their team-based care includes care and support of severe mental illness, medication and support for opioid and other substance use disorders, HIV care and prevention, in addition to broad primary and preventive care.
Dr. Huggett was named the 2018 Illinois Family Physician of the Year by the Illinois Academy of Family Physicians, recognizing his 25 years of working on the West Side of Chicago passionately providing primary care to residents of marginalized communities, particularly those struggling with homelessness and substance use. He is the ideal role model, mentor, and instructor for family physicians.
Dr. Huggett lives in the Austin community on the West Side of Chicago.
Louisa Olushoga, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Dartmouth College
Medical School: University of Illinois College of Medicine
Residency: University of Chicago
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Dr. Olushoga is faculty for behavioral health and serves as a resident advisor. In her role at LCHC, Dr. Olushoga works in collaboration with primary care providers to deliver psychiatric care to LCHC patients. A passionate advocate for women’s mental health with a particular interest in minority populations, Dr. Olushoga is an accomplished lecturer and resource on topics such as mental health care amongst vulnerable populations, collective trauma, and psychiatric diagnosis/treatment during the peripartum period. Her research interests include women’s mental health and management of complex psychiatric issues within the context of trauma.
Dr. Olushoga augmented her training with a fellowship in Women’s Psychiatry at Northwestern University. During residency she received a prestigious American Psychiatric Association Diversity Leadership award and served on the APA Council of Minority Mental Health/Health Disparities. She holds a faculty affiliation with Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine where she supervises medical students and maintains continued involvement in research, and helped establish the Women’s Psychiatric Clinic at the University of Chicago. She has worked as a consulting psychiatrist for the ERASE Trafficking program, a ground-breaking local effort to provide comprehensive care to survivors of sex and labor trafficking, and served as Associate Board President for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
Alex Porte, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Hope College
Medical School: Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
Residency: South Bend Memorial Hospital
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Dr. Porte is a lead preceptor in the continuity clinic of the family medicine residency program. He began work at LCHC in 2019, based out of the Homan Square clinic. Dr. Porte’s interests include addiction medicine and treatment of severe mental illness. He also has a special interest in treating persons experiencing homelessness, and his experiences in that area include serving as the site medical director at Pacific Garden Mission (one of the largest shelters in the country), and working at a hotel-based shelter used to protect vulnerable persons during the Covid epidemic.
Dr. Porte graduated from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine in 2016 and completed his family medicine residency at Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Indiana, in 2019.
Originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Dr. Porte lives in North Lawndale with his wife, Courtney, and his three children. He loves playing pickup basketball at Lawndale’s gym, going to Douglass Park, and hiking the dunes of Lake Michigan with his family.
Melissa Preyss, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: University of Chicago
Medical School: University of Illinois College of Medicine
Residency: University of Chicago
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Dr. Preyss is lead faculty for the Women’s Health rotation. She provides comprehensive obstetrics and gynecology care to patients at LCHC as well our primary partner hospitals, where she takes call and operates. Her clinical interests include full spectrum obstetrics and gynecology, abnormal uterine bleeding, and providing access to minimally invasive surgery and prolapse management to historically medically underserved patient groups. She is passionate about health equity and fluent in Spanish.
Dr. Preyss is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, serves on the steering committee for Chicago's Equal Care — Cervical Cancer initiative, and is also faculty for the OB/GYN residency at Sinai Hospital.
She lives in Oak Park with her husband, Ben, and their three young boys. She loves to travel and try new foods, though nothing will ever quite taste as good as her Grandma's pozole.
Michael Sethi, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Wheaton College
Medical School: Oregon Health and Science University
Residency: Oregon Health and Science University
MBA: Eastern University
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Dr. Sethi first came to Lawndale as an intern from 2007 to 2009, and returned as a general pediatrician in 2016, seeing patients in the clinic and the hospital. He has been the LCHC pediatric service line leader since 2021 and faculty for the Family Medicine Residency Program since 2022, where he serves as the supervisor of inpatient and outpatient pediatric rotations. He enjoys all aspects of primary care pediatrics, and particularly enjoys breastfeeding promotion, medical education, and improving coordination of care with other institutions.
Prior to his work as a physician, Dr. Sethi spent 16 months working for an organization in Afghanistan, expanding the reach of the national tuberculosis program. It was there that he felt called to a career in medicine and where he met people from Lawndale who encouraged him to work at LCHC while preparing for medical school.
Dr. Sethi lives four blocks from the clinic in Little Village with his wife Bethany and their three daughters. He enjoys leading worship on keys or guitar, cooking adventurous food, struggling to bring order to his garden, and traveling the world with his family.
Erick Skaff, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Hope College
Medical School: Rush Medical College
Residency: West Suburban Hospital
Fellowship: Perinatal Child Health, PCC Community Wellness
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Dr. Skaff is core faculty working with residents in continuity clinic, on our Maternal Child Health service, as well as on inpatient medicine team. His journey with LCHC began as a medical student, when he was assigned continuity clinic with Dr. Benjamin Preyss as part of his medical school's family medicine leadership program.
He is passionate about full spectrum family medicine and completed a specialized fellowship training in high-risk obstetrics, including Cesarean sections.
Dr. Skaff was honored with the Edward J. Eckenfels Award in Social and Community Medicine during medical school and was awarded the Resident Teacher of the Year by both faculty and peers during his residency.
A native of Flint, Michigan, Dr. Skaff married a Chicagoan who was a patient at LCHC during her childhood. When not immersed in medicine, he can be found exploring Chicago's diverse culinary scene and teaching his one-year-old daughter how to swim.
Allison Thoburn, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: University of Chicago
Medical School: University of Illinois College of Medicine
Residency: University of Chicago
Fellowship: Geriatrics, University of Chicago
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Dr. Thoburn is the faculty lead for Geriatrics. She serves as Medical Director for LCHC's Senior Clinic where she enjoys practicing both primary care for older adults, as well as offering consults for specific geriatric concerns.
As a medical student at UIC, she had the opportunity to visit LCHC with her chapter of the Christian Medical and Dental Association, and witnessed the beauty of the mission here. Upon completing her geriatric fellowship at U of C, she took the opportunity to come to LCHC with the goal of bringing better access to specialized geriatric care for older adults in our surrounding neighborhoods.
Outside of work, she enjoys gardening and cooking with the produce she grows, as well as spending time with her husband and two dogs.
Brendan Webb, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Bob Jones University
Medical School: Rush Medical College
Residency: Mount Sinai Medical Center
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Dr. Webb is faculty for Emergency Medicine and provides FMR training and education in multiple clinical areas, including POCUS and acute care. Dr. Webb is the Medical Director of LCHC’s Immediate Care Clinic and also takes call with the inpatient medicine team at Mt. Sinai and St. Anthony hospitals.
After completing residency, Dr. Webb worked at the LBJ Tropical Medical Center in Pago Pago, American Samoa. He continued work in family and emergency medicine in rural Michigan while completing a diploma in Tropical Medicine and preparing for a move to Yemen. In Yemen, Dr. Webb led the development of an emergency department, provided medical education at a large government hospital, and ran a free clinic in an orphanage and a prison. Dr. Webb then moved to Egypt and served as the Associate Program Director in the Aswan Family Medicine Residency Program for five years.
After 16 years overseas, Dr. Webb returned to Chicago, where he now lives with his wife and two children.
Thomas Yates, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: Covenant College
Medical School: Wake Forest University
Residency: University of Chicago
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Dr. Yates is the faculty lead for the Family Medicine Inpatient Service at Mount Sinai Hospital, and has special clinical interests in the treatment of substance use disorders and in HIV medicine. He worked as an intern at Lawndale Christian Health Center prior to attending medical school, and was inspired by the vision of empowering communities through the integration of faith and medicine in primary care.
Dr. Yates was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and the Gold Humanism Honor Society at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and is a National Health Service Corp Scholar. He has contributed research on the interplay between perceived stigma and HIV outcomes, and has had his narrative medicine writings published in JAMA.
Dr. Yates enjoys life with his native Chicagoan wife and three children in the Woodlawn neighborhood, where church and extended family are a walking distance away. He also has a special love of fly fishing, and regularly voyages out of the city to the creeks of Wisconsin’s Driftless Area for a late evening of fishing.
MICHELLE YOO, MD // Faculty ▼
Undergraduate: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Medical School: University of Illinois at Chicago
Residency: Loyola University/MacNeal Hospital
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Dr. Yoo is faculty with a focus on providing teaching and supervision to residents in clinic. She also leads morning teaching/didactics in clinic as well as case-based discussions. Dr. Yoo enjoys procedures and broad-spectrum family medicine, and has a particular interest in women’s health/OB and global health.
In medical school, Dr. Yoo was a scholar in the Global Medicine Program, which provided supplemental curriculum in global health. She was involved in overseas medical mission work/research during this time and was also a member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society.
Dr. Yoo stumbled across LCHC's Green Tomato Cafe during medical school while in search of a place to study. After witnessing two strangers interlocking hands and fervently praying together, she later found out about LCHC and its mission. Since then, she has found LCHC to be a perfect fit for her.
Outside of medicine, she loves traveling and exploring new cultures and foods. She also enjoys hiking and music (playing guitar, piano, leading worship at church) and spending time with her husband, newborn baby, and German shepherd puppy.
