Jacqueline Rosemarie Satchell, MD, assistant professor of medicine (general medicine) and a leading clinician educator in the Yale Section of General Internal Medicine and VA Connecticut Healthcare System, died unexpectedly on Wednesday, October 7, 2020.
Satchell was born in 1968 in Kingston, Jamaica, where she attended Meadowbrook High School before immigrating to the United States in 1985 at age 17, settling in New Haven with her mother, stepfather, and siblings. She completed her senior year of high school at James Hillhouse High School in New Haven and then headed to college at the University of Connecticut.
Satchell graduated from UConn in 1990 and earned her MD degree from Temple University in 1995. Yale then recruited her to its Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency Program, which she completed in an outstanding manner in 1998. Throughout residency, she was identified by her peers as a bright, caring, and supportive colleague who always brought positive energy to her work. Following residency, she worked as a general internist in a primary care group practice in Waterbury for 3-1/2 years. She then joined the Yale faculty as a member of the Section of General Internal Medicine in 2001.
As a member of the faculty, she served as a clinician educator in primary care at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven. Her role at the VA included a mixture of educational and clinical activities, and her contributions to these programs were highly significant. She contributed to the health and well-being of thousands of veterans who sought her meticulous care, while at the same time serving as a teacher and role model for Yale medical students and residents. In addition to her other important roles in the Department of Internal Medicine, she remained an active and highly valued member of the department's education programs and an important member of the Primary Care Residency Internship Selection Committee for nearly 20 years.
Perhaps the most notable of Satchell's leadership roles was her position as medical director of the VA Women Veterans Program since January 2018. This is an enormous leadership position and includes administration, teaching, and clinical oversight for a program that cares for nearly 5,000 female veterans. She dedicated her creativity and innovative spirit to enhancing the care of all of her patients. She expanded the multidisciplinary team caring for female veterans, championed trauma-informed care, and participated in innovative programs to recognize and treat cardiovascular disease in women. She also devised local, regional, and national educational programs, but perhaps most important, she built a family united in service of this deserving population. she also produced important scholarship on women’s health and other topics in primary care in the form of book chapters, curricula, and commentaries.
In addition to her roles as a member of the Yale faculty and physician leader at the VA, Satchell was a beloved member of her community in New Haven and beyond. She participated in community-based health fairs in the New Haven community that were sponsored by local churches and community organizations, speaking on topics important to all including women’s health and heart disease.
She enjoyed traveling and spending time with family, especially her two daughters, Erica Elizabeth Jones and Alissa Marie Jones, with whom she took international vacations annually. Her faith was important to her throughout her life and she began each day in a prayer session with her mother Gloria. For decades she attended the Christian Fellowship Church of God, where she was a Sunday school teacher and involved in such activities as Women’s Day, Women’s Enrichment, choir, picnics, and other church-related events.