The University of California awarded $3.5 million on behalf of the State of California through The California Fund for Advancing Physician Education and Workforce Growth ("The Grow Grants") to support seven innovative medical education initiatives. Awarded in December 2025, these funded programs are expanding California's physician workforce by strengthening training opportunities, developing new educational pathways, and increasing access to care in communities across the state.
Learn how 2025 awardees are making a difference by advancing the next generation of physicians and addressing California's evolving healthcare workforce needs.
Expanding Occupational and Environmental Medicine Training in Rural Agricultural California
UCSF Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) Residency Program
Serving the San Joaquin Valley region
Project lead: Gina Solomon, M.D., MPH
California’s agricultural workforce faces pesticide exposure, heat illness, serious injuries, and wildfire smoke exposure. Yet many rural communities lack access to physicians trained in occupational and environmental medicine (OEM) who can diagnose, treat, and prevent these conditions. This program will prepare OEM residents to provide clinical care for agricultural workers, consult with employers on workplace safety, and collaborate with public health agencies on surveillance and prevention through partnerships with clinical and public health sites in the Fresno–Merced area and the Salinas Valley.
We aim to build a sustainable pipeline of physicians interested in serving farmworkers and rural employers while strengthening partnerships with community organizations and health departments.
“The Grow Grant will help strengthen the pipeline of occupational and environmental health doctors who are committed to working alongside farmworker communities and advancing environmental justice. This investment is critical for building long-term partnerships between academic medicine and frontline organizations to protect the health and dignity of workers across the Central Valley.”
Grow NorCal Physicians Pipeline Program
Healthy Rural California, Inc.
Serving Northern and Sierra regions
Project leads: Tracy Liston, MS and Danielle Harwood, M.D.
The Grow NorCal Physicians Pipeline Program in partnership with UC Davis School of Medicine, Touro University California, CSU Chico, and Enloe Health to build a continuous physician pipeline for the rural North State. The program links two connected efforts; the revitalized Chico State Pre-Med Club; pre-medical pathways at Chico State and the development of 3rd year medical clerkships across Butte, Glenn, and surrounding counties. Together, these components move students from K-12 awareness in Butte and Glenn counties through college, medical school rotations at UC Davis and Touro, and into HRC's Family Medicine and Psychiatry residency programs, thus addressing California's physician shortage where it is most acute.
As we close out the first phase of the Grow Grant, we are pleased to report that the foundational work is firmly in place. This phase was intentionally focused on needs assessment, partnership building, and laying the institutional groundwork necessary for sustained success. We identified critical gaps in pre-med club engagement and clarified student support needs that will shape our programming going forward as we partner with Chico State. Concurrently, they're advancing a new pre-healthcare professional minor through the approval process period. This is a significant institutional step that will allow Healthy Rural California to formally identify and track pre-health students and build clear pathways into healthcare careers. On the clerkship side, we now have a clear understanding of core rotational structures and needs with both UC Davis and Tuoro, and we've begun actively working towards defining the 2027-2028 academic year. The work of this first phase has positioned HRC well to move forward from planning into programming, and we look forward to sharing tangible outcomes in the quarters ahead.
IMPACCT — Integrated Medicine, Psychiatry & Addiction Curriculum & Community Transformation
UC Davis Health Department of Internal Medicine
Serving the Sacramento region
Project leads: Jeremy DeMartini, M.D. and Sara Teasdale, M.D.
IMPACCT is a new training initiative designed to prepare primary care resident physicians to better address mental health and substance use needs in underserved communities across California while strengthening the physician workforce in regions facing the most severe shortages. UC Davis faculty partner closely with community health centers and rural residency programs to co-develop and adapt a freely available behavioral health curriculum that reflects the realities and needs of rural and underserved practice settings. Through this curriculum, integrated behavioral health training, and rural clinical rotations, UC Davis Internal Medicine Primary Care Track residents gain hands-on experience delivering whole-person care in safety-net clinics and federally designated shortage areas.
“Grow Grant funding has helped expand integrated primary care and behavioral health training for UC Davis Internal Medicine Primary Care Track residents through partnerships with rural residency programs and community health centers across California. The support strengthens curriculum development, rural training opportunities, and hands-on experience in psychiatry and addiction medicine for residents caring for Medi-Cal and underserved communities. Through IMPACCT, we hope to train and retain more primary care physicians prepared to address mental health and substance use needs in rural and safety-net settings where workforce shortages remain severe. This investment moves us closer to improving access to whole-person care for Californians who have historically faced barriers to behavioral health services.”
JustBelong: The UCLA - Homeboy Justice-Informed Physician Workforce Training Initiative
UCLA Health Department of Medicine
Serving Los Angeles County
Project leads: Daniel Kozman, M.D., MPH and Kaitlyn Fruin, M.D., MPH
JustBelong is a two-year program led by a partnership between UCLA Health and Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. JustBelong has a dual mission: training 100 UCLA medical students, residents, and fellows in trauma-informed, reentry-focused clinical care through on-site rotations at Homeboy Industries, while simultaneously creating a medical career pipeline for 150 justice-impacted youth served by Homeboy. The program embeds addiction medicine and psychiatry faculty at Homeboy to supervise trainees and deliver care to uninsured and Medi-Cal patients, directly addressing California's critical shortages in primary care, psychiatry, and addiction medicine. By combining clinical training, community-based care, and youth mentorship in a single model, JustBelong aims to build a physician workforce better equipped to serve justice-impacted and underserved communities across Los Angeles.
Read more about UCLA Health and Homeboy Industries partnerships
"Grow Grant funding has allowed us to do something truly unprecedented — bringing medical trainees from UCLA and Charles Drew University directly into the heart of one of Los Angeles' most trusted community organizations, and bringing youth from Homeboy Industries to UCLA to learn how they can join the healthcare workforce. This two-way exchange is building a physician workforce that is better prepared to serve justice-impacted communities, while opening doors to medical careers for young people who have historically been excluded from the profession. We anticipate that this initiative will strengthen California's pipeline of physicians in critical shortage specialties like primary care, addiction medicine and psychiatry, while improving health outcomes for some of our most underserved communities — people reintegrating into society after gang involvement and incarceration who deserve consistent, compassionate care close to home."
- Kaitlyn Fruin, M.D., MSPH, Clinical Instructor and Co-Principal Investigator of the UCLA–Homeboy Justice-Informed Physician Workforce Training Initiative
Pathways for Accelerating Community-based Training
UC Davis School of Medicine
Serving the Sacramento region
Project leads: Alicia Gonzalez-Flores, M.D. and Tonya Fancher, M.D.
To address California’s longstanding shortage and uneven distribution of physicians in primary care, psychiatry, and pediatrics, PACT will implement two accelerated undergraduate medical education (UME)–to–graduate medical education (GME) pathways in psychiatry and pediatrics. These pathways will enable students committed to serving underserved communities to complete medical school in three years through early clinical training and directly linking them into residency programs. PACT will also develop a dissemination toolkit to support adoption by other California medical schools.
Read more about the UC Davis School of Medicine accelerated pathways
"Grow Grant funding has allowed us to expand our successful accelerated primary care model to include new three-year pathways in high-need specialties such as pediatrics and psychiatry. This support is enabling us to develop the curriculum, clinical experiences, and faculty partnerships in psychiatry and pediatrics needed to recruit and train students committed to underserved communities. Anticipated outcomes include increasing the number of physicians from and serving underserved communities in high-need regions. Ultimately, these programs aim to expand the physician workforce and improve access to care for California’s most vulnerable populations."
- Alicia Gonzalez-Flores, M.D., Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of Pathways for Accelerating Community-based Training at UC Davis School of Medicine
Community-Based Aging Care Pathway
La Maestra Family Clinic, Inc.
Serving the San Diego region
Project lead: Jairo Romero, M.D.
GME Pathways Back to California SoCal Network
Charles R Drew University
Serving Los Angeles County
Project lead: Dotun Ogunyemi, M.D., FACOG, MFM
Read more about Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science
Access the 2025 awardee resources
For inquiries, please contact GrowGrants@ucop.edu.
This grant opportunity is funded by Proposition 35 (2024) and administered by University of California Health.