Dr. Ottenheimer is currently the director of Women’s Health Services at the Morrisania Diagnostic and Treatment Center, one of the largest of the NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham health centers. The Women’s Health service provides obstetric and gynecologic care to at-risk women in the South Bronx, including a large immigrant population composed primarily of women from Bengal, the Caribbean, Central America, and West Africa. The focus of Dr. Ottenheimer’s work is the development of culturally competent and linguistically appropriate women’s health services with cross-sectoral collaboration with other medical specialties and community organizations.
In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Ottenheimer spends a significant portion of her professional time assisting asylum-seeking women who have suffered sexual and gender-based violence and other human rights violations. She is an active member of Physicians for Human Rights, and serves as faculty at the Human Rights Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Weil Cornell Clinic for Human Rights, and the CUNY School of Medicine Human Rights Collaborative, aiding survivors of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), domestic violence, sexual violence, and human trafficking in their applications for asylum. To date, she has performed more than 125 forensic medical evaluations. She has published and lectured extensively on human rights violations against women, with a focus on FGM/C. She has also worked in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, and Rwanda, helping to improve the health and lives of women in low-resource settings.
Dr. Ottenheimer is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine and was awarded the Paul Stolley Award in Clinical Epidemiology for her work on family planning practices in Cameroon, West Africa. Dr. Ottenheimer completed her residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at St.Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan.