He is succeeded by Dr. Natalia Covarrubias-Eckardt
Fred Nowroozi, MD, retired at the end of August after 30 years as Medical Director of the Inpatient Rehab Facility (IRF) & Chronic Pain Management.
Natalia Covarrubias-Eckardt, MD, has accepted the position of Medical Director of the IRF, Back Program and Pain Management program.
Besides serving at the IRF in Brea, Dr. Nowroozi has developed and practiced a pain treatment program at the Centers for Excellence in Pain Management in Newport Beach, where for more than four decades he has offered an educational, group treatment approach to pain management.
He is the founder and president of the nonprofit, non-political, non-sectarian Fana Global Foundation (FGF), whose mission is to contribute to the transformation of global communities through art and education. (If you'd like to learn more about FGF, drop him a line at [email protected].)
Dr. Nowroozi graduated from Tehran University of Medical Sciences School of Medicine in 1970 and completed his medical residency program at New York Presbyterian Hospital of Columbia University Medical School. He then spent one and a half years as a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Health.
Like Dr. Nowroozi, Dr. Covarrubias-Eckardt specializes in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She graduated with honors in 2010 from Universidad Central Del Caribe in Puerto Rico and did her residency with the UC Irvine Physical Medicine & Rehab Residency Program.
She contributed the chapter "Complications: a Patient with Serotonin Syndrome" for Alan David Kaye and Rinoo Shah's book Case Studies in Pain Management (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Dr. Covarrubias-Eckardt was also among the co-authors of "The Relationship Between Taekwondo Training Habits and Injury: A Survey of a Collegiate Taekwondo Population" (The Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine, April 2015) and "The Benefits of Rehabilitation for Palliative Care Patients" (The American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care, December 2013).
She is a member of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and, besides St. Jude, Dr. Covarrubias-Eckardt is affiliated with Orange County Global Medical Center in Santa Ana.