Stephen Chang, MD

Dr. Ariana M. Nelson is a board-certified anesthesiologist who specializes in interventional pain management, as well as in acute and chronic pain.Her clinical interests include back, neck, joint, neck and neuropathic pain. She also is skilled in radiofrequency ablation, peripheral nerve stimulation and spinal cord stimulation.She earned a medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor. She completed a residency in anesthesiology and a fellowship in multidisciplinary pain management at the Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.Nelson's research interests include aerospace medicine and exploring the medical capabilities and resources needed for space exploration. She is working with NASA on the upcoming Artemis expeditions for lunar orbital and surface missions. She also studies objective measurements of pain, opioid-related side effects, substance-use disorder and how cannabis may be used to alleviate pain. She has contributed to many book chapters on pain medicine and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Anesthesia & Analgesia and Pain Medicine.In fall 2021, she was named one of 12 Dean's Scholars, a select group of UCI School of Medicine faculty members charged with implementing initiatives to advance the training and assessment of medical students' clinical skills and develop the next generation of medical education scholars and national leaders. She is also a core faculty member for the Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC), a five-year, combined MD and masters training program for physicians committed to serving under-resourced Latino communities.Nelson, who speaks fluent Spanish, strives to improve her patients' quality of life with state-of-the art pain management therapies and the use of non-opioid medications.

Dr. Fatima T. Malik is a board-certified UCI Health nephrologist. Malik earned her medical degree at King Edward Medical University in Lahore, Pakistan, followed by a residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Maricopa Integrated Health System in Phoenix, Ariz. She completed a fellowship in nephrology at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center, followed by a fellowship in transplant nephrology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Her clinical interests include acute and chronic kidney disease, kidney transplantation in highly sensitized patients and acute kidney transplant rejection.

Dr. Melissa Lopez is a UCI Health gynecologist and obstetrician. She earned her medical degree at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, followed by a residency in gynecology and obstetrics at UCI School of Medicine. Lopez, who also speaks Spanish.