Opal Taylor, MD, MPH is an attending emergency medicine physician at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in Martinez, California. Dr. Taylor was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone and grew up in Dakar, Senegal, West Africa. She completed her residency training in emergency medicine and earned her Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) training certificate at Highland General Hospital, Alameda County Regional Medical Center, Oakland, California in 2008. Prior to moving to California, she completed a Master’s of Public Health degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, with a focus on Humanitarian Assistance and Refugee Studies. She earned her medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine in 2003.

Dr. Taylor is passionately motivated to care for the underserved. This has led her to focus on point of care ultrasound (POCUS), which is an essential diagnostic tool that is widely available and portable to remote settings that are under-resourced and in disaster situations. She uses POCUS daily as part of her emergency medicine practice at the county hospital as well as internationally in medical mission trips to developing countries. Dr. Taylor spent 6 weeks teaching ultrasound to medical providers on Congolese and Burundian refugee camps in Tanzania. She subsequently volunteered with International Medical Corps in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake and had the first-hand experience of working in a disaster setting where POCUS was the principal imaging modality available in the tent hospital emergency department.