In 2009, Dr. Padam co-founded a free clinic for the uninsured, which is now the Guru Nanak Free Medical Clinic in San Jose, California.

 

While seeing patients in the clinic, she and her colleagues identified a number of unaddressed issues, including domestic violence, lack of resources and lack of social support. This led to the creation of the Sikh Family Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that was formed as a grassroots community-based organization. The Center helps create healthy, violence-free, more equitable communities by bridging gaps in access to public resources and social services, and by providing community members with direct support and education using an empowerment approach that attends to cultural tradition, immigration experiences and language access. Dr. Padam continues to serve the Sikh Family Center as a member of the Board of Directors.

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Dr. Padam has served as a member of the Board of Directors for several healthcare organizations at the local, county, and state-level advocating for healthcare legislation, bridging health care disparities, improving access to care, and providing free health care for the most vulnerable members of society.  She contributes to medical humanities writing as a means to champion physician wellness and highlighting the tenderness of the physician-patient relationship.
 

Dr. Padam is board-certified Family Medicine physician and Lifestyle Medicine sub-specialist.  She is fellowship trained in Hospice and Palliative Medicine from Stanford/VA Palo Alto and with a mini-fellowship in Ethno-Geriatrics from the Stanford Geriatric Education Center.  Her special interest includes understanding the unique cultural and linguistic barriers to the delivery of culturally literate medicine to multi-ethnic patients and families and other social determinants of healthcare disparities.