Alpana Soni MD, FACS

Dr. Alpana Soni is a General Surgeon at The Permanente Medical Group. She is from the Midwest. After she was born in Himachal Pradesh, India, she immigrated with her parents to Dayton, Ohio, “The Heart of it All,” where she grew up until she went off to college in the Chicago area at Northwestern University. She studied in the Honors Program of Medical Education, thereby completing her BS in Biomedical Engineering from the McCormick School of Engineering, and then matriculating to the Feinberg School of Medicine for her MD. She went on to General Surgery Residency at the University of California at San Diego. During her residency, she completed an NIH T32 research fellowship at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX in the surgical oncology department with a mentor who is a breast surgical oncologist. After gaining an appreciation for basic science research and working on a project culminating in a podium presentation at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress and publishing a paper, she returned to UC San Diego to complete her clinical residency. Upon completion, she moved to northern California after marrying her husband Vinod and went to work for The Permanente Medical Group in Vallejo, CA, one of the first Kaiser Hospitals in the system soon after the organization was established in post-World War II Northern California. She is proud to work at an organization where the bottom line for the patient is in alignment with the bottom line of the organization, and the doctor-patient relationship is sacrosanct. This allows for there to be space for healing the healer.

Dr. Soni’s practice consists mostly of breast surgery as well as melanoma surgery and surgical management of other skin cancers. In the past few years, she has pursued Lifestyle Medicine and hopes to gain board certification. She is part of regional leadership in melanoma surgical care. She is also the lead for the regional general surgeons in the curriculum around Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity. Perhaps most importantly, she is deeply passionate about advancing physician health and wellness, specifically as it pertains to surgeons.

In the Fall of 2022, she was part of a team of physicians who launched a program in physician health and wellness using the pillars of Lifestyle Medicine, creating a model of care worthy of replication and emulation. This resulted in powerful outcomes for the physician-patients, which were presented at an International Wellness Conference.