Class of 2012 holds graduation.

The UC San Francisco School of Medicine graduated the Class of 2012 on May 11 at a festive ceremony at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Among the newly minted doctors this year are Angela Echiverri and Chelsea Bowman, both of whom tell a little bit about themselves in these videos.

Members of the UCSF School of Medicine Class of 2012. (Click image to view slideshow.)

Bowman says she came to UCSF to find her passion, whether it’s conducting bench side, clinical or translational research, advancing community or global health, or driving improvements in health care or health policy. Among the highlights of her experience at UCSF is the interaction with her classmates.

Bowman recently told UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, M.D., M.P.H., a new acronym for UCSF: You can stay forever. In fact, Bowman will do that at least for another three years serving her residency in internal medicine and focusing on quality improvement and patient safety.

Echiverri is a graduate of the Program in Medical Education for the Urban Underserved (PRIME-US), which provides skills and support to medical students with demonstrated interest in working with urban underserved communities. A champion for diversity and health equity, Echiverri was honored with the 2012 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Awards.

[Related: UC Davis School of Medicine celebrates commencement]

She will serve her residency in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the UCSF-affiliated San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. After that, Echiverri says she will pursue a career in academic medicine, practicing primary care, addressing health disparities and strengthening the pipeline of disadvantaged students in the medical profession.

AB 1533 would authorize UCLA pre-residency training pilot.

The state Assembly passed a bill 74-0 on Thursday that would authorize a five-year pilot for the UCLA International Medical Graduate (IMG) program. AB 1533, jointly sponsored by UC and the Medical Board of California, was introduced by Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, who chairs the Budget Subcommittee on Health and is a member of the Assembly Health Committee.

The bill would allow program participants to engage in supervised “hands-on” clinical training in preparation for application to accredited family medicine residency programs in California. IMG is an innovative program addressing changing demographics and the shortage of Hispanic doctors. It helps international medical graduates compete for primary care residency training positions in U.S. teaching hospitals and assists them in obtaining their medical licenses with the goal of allowing them to work in underserved Hispanic and other minority communities upon completion of their residency training.

First UC Riverside building to receive recognition from U.S. Green Building Council.

The windows of the UC Riverside School of Medicine Research Building have automatic solar shades that control the amount of natural light that enters the building.

The School of Medicine Research Building at the University of California, Riverside, has received LEED Gold certification by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), recognizing efforts to design and build a facility with measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.

The award, along with information about the green building will be on display Thursday at the UCR Bell Tower as part of the campus’ Earth Week events. The building is the first on the UCR campus to receive any level of LEED certification.

The School of Medicine Research Building (SOMRB) is a three-story, 58,000 square foot building that features highly flexible biomedical and population health research facilities that can accommodate a variety of disciplines. It was originally designed by SRG Partnership Inc. to meet LEED Silver requirements, but Campus Architect Don Caskey and Sustainability Coordinator John Cook were able to document that the university had taken its environmental efforts to the next level.

“We went back in and found points that hadn’t been applied for, such as restoring habitat, maximize open space, alternative transportation parking, heat island effect,” Cook said, explaining that the certification process requires documentation of all claims.

LEED certification was developed by the USGBC in 2000 and features four different levels: platinum, gold, silver and “certified.” Buildings are given points for reaching specific milestones in a variety of areas, including sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. The University of California Office of the President has made a systemwide commitment that all new campus construction and renovations meet a minimum of LEED Silver standards.

“To have our School of Medicine Research Building achieve the LEED Gold rating is a tremendous accomplishment because it is challenging especially to design and construct a laboratory building with the sustainability features necessary for this prestigious certification,” said G. Richard Olds, dean of the medical school. “In addition to its green design and operation, this building will provide the advanced research facilities necessary to recruit the additional faculty we will need to open the medical school and train more physicians for our region.”

“For our first LEED certified project to make gold is marvelous,” Caskey said. “It has a lot of innovations, and I like the fact that we are on the cutting edge, trying things. We are out of the box with a bang and it sets the stage for where we are going with future construction.”

Caskey said that the new Glen Mor II housing project will seek LEED Gold certification in 2014 and that the campus would be pursuing LEED Existing Building: Operations and Maintenance (EBOM) certification on several older campus buildings.

Cook said it is a major accomplishment for a laboratory building like SOMRB to earn LEED Gold Certification due to the power demands of laboratory equipment.

“It is much harder to get the energy efficiencies with a lab because of the amount of energy needed for the vent hoods. You are taking all the air out of the building about every six minutes,” he said. “And yet, we were able to achieve that without increasing risk.”

Cook said that his favorite feature of the building is the automatic solar shades that measure the amount of light coming into a room and deploy as necessary. They are one of the more obvious energy efficient refinements that also include natural habitat landscaping instead of turfgrass, ceiling fans and LED lighting. But Cook said there are many behind-the-scenes aspects that most people will never see.

“That is just the way you want it,” he said. “You don’t think about it, but you are able to see better, to breathe better, to work better. That is what we are looking for.”

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Santorum, Maddow, Colbert are wrong about UCSF.

UCSF dates its founding to 1864, when South Carolina surgeon Hugh Toland founded a private medical school in San Francisco. Above, nurses stand inside an operating room at UC Hospital in 1913.

Let the record reflect: American history is indeed taught at the University of California, San Francisco.

After presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently stated that American history was no longer offered at most UC campuses, reporters at several media outlets were quick to set the record straight. Several, including television hosts Rachel Maddow and Steven Colbert, pointed out that only one UC campus does not teach history — UCSF.

They got it wrong, too.

When UCSF history professor Dorothy Porter, Ph.D., heard MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow’s story on Tuesday night, she couldn’t react quickly enough.

“I know that Rachel likes to get her facts absolutely correct, so I sent off an email as soon as I could find an address for the show,” Porter said. Her message, reinforced by other UCSF history professors reached for comment this week, was simple: history is alive and well at UCSF.

The history of history at UCSF

History classes at UCSF have been around since the Great Depression, first taught to aspiring medical students in 1930. The university has offered degrees in history since the civil rights era, minting the Ph.D. program in the History of Health Sciences in 1965.

Today both master’s and doctoral degrees in the subject are offered through the university’s Department of Anthropology, History & Social Medicine. UCSF is, in fact, the only campus within the entire UC system that offers a doctoral degree in the history of the health sciences. Its scholars focus on both American and world history and contribute to our understanding of the conditions that make modern medicine what it is today.

“In our graduate programs, American history is not only taught — it is required,” said Brian Dolan, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of the department and the director of the graduate programs in history of health sciences.

Elective courses are available for the entire student body at UCSF’s four professional schools, whether in medicine, pharmacy, nursing or dentistry.

These courses offer a rich exploration of some of the key social, cultural, economic, and political contexts of American and world history — the development of medical science and technology in America, the development of the medical profession in the United States, and the history of therapies developed in America. Specialized courses include psychiatry in the United States, the history of American medicine, 20th century American medicine, and the history of social movements in America.

“Historical understanding of both scientific and health care breakthroughs and mistakes can provide enormous benefit to the health science and care that we are doing today,” said Nancy Milliken, M.D., vice dean of the UCSF School of Medicine, director of the UCSF Center of Excellence in Women’s Health and acting chair of the Department of Anthropology, History & Social Medicine.

“Informed by this perspective,” she added, “our students can be better prepared to advance health worldwide and contribute to collaborative science and systems of care.”

Related links:

• History of Medicine and Health Sciences Program at UCSF
• UCSF Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine
• A History of UCSF

UCSF’s annual forum focuses on health concerns.

Student organizers helped ensure the success of UCSF's fourth annual LGBT health forum.

For the fourth consecutive year, the UC San Francisco Center for LGBT Health & Equity convened a health forum, attracting 200 interprofessional health students for two days of education about the long-overlooked health concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGTBQI) people.

The 2012 forum held earlier this month highlighted two major developments in LGBT health since the 2011 meeting: the publication of an Institute of Medicine report on LGBT health concerns and the release of a groundbreaking “Field Guide” to best practices in LGBT patient-centered care by the Joint Commission, the accrediting body for the nation’s hospitals.

“Attention to LGBT health has skyrocketed since we held the first forum in 2009,” said Shane Snowdon, director of the UCSF Center for LGBT Health & Equity, which has convened the forum annually and served as project adviser for the Joint Commission’s LGBT Field Guide. “That’s no coincidence: UCSF has been a national leader in highlighting LGBT health needs and educating health professionals about them.”

This year’s forum, planned in conjunction with the UCSF LGBTQ Student Association, featured the UC premiere of “Gen Silent,” a powerful film about the challenges faced by LGBT elders. “The generation that fought hardest to come out is going back in . . . to survive,”  the film states.

A screening of the film, which moved many viewers to tears, was followed by a question-and-answer sessions with Seth Kilbourn, director of Openhouse, the non-profit that serves LGBT seniors in San Francisco.

The forum featured multiple workshops on LGBT health topics, a panel of LGBTQI patients speaking candidly about their health care experiences, and keynotes by Snowdon, noted sex educator Carol Queen and Darin Latimore, M.D., assistant dean for student and resident diversity at UC Davis School of Medicine.

Latimore also participated in a well-attended panel of health professionals discussing their individual journeys as “out” practitioners.

Students from UCSF’s schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy and physical therapy were joined by students from other institutions at the sold-out event, which offered elective credit. Evaluations of the forum were overwhelmingly positive, with many attendees indicating that it had significantly heightened their awareness of LGBT concerns in health care and beyond.

Many attendees shared the sentiments of a student who said, “I never really thought about whether my friends’ sexual orientation was important with respect to run-of-the-mill conversations, and I didn’t realize there were significant health implications associated with their sexuality. I think I’ll be asking more questions to encourage disclosure when I’m providing health care. Additionally, I think I’ll make fewer assumptions about other people, including my friend and family.”

Attendees also expressed appreciation for the attention paid to transgender health needs at the forum. “I feel more comfortable working with LGBTQI patients now, and have greatly improved knowledge about transgender health issues,” said an attendee. “I wish this forum was required for all students!”

Snowdon, who lectures on LGBTQI health in all of UCSF’s schools, notes that forum attendance has quadrupled since 2009, reflecting students’ intensifying interest in the subject. “When I became LGBT director in 1999, we could only dream of selling out a 200-student forum. I give our busy students tremendous credit for spending a weekend learning about LGBT health needs — their interest means a lot.”

UCSF training program marks its 40th anniversary.

Kevin Grumbach, UC San Francisco

As the United States marks the second anniversary of the passage of national health care reform, the UCSF Family and Community Medicine Residency Training Program at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) will celebrate another milestone, its 40^th anniversary.

And its theme could not be more apropos: Preparing Family Physician Leaders in Health System Change.

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to consider constitutional questions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on Monday, those on the frontlines of primary care are exploring the challenges posed by a greater demand on family medicine as the previously uninsured seek primary care physicians to gain access to the health care system.

“It’s an exciting time and a wonderful opportunity to help shape the direction of the whole health system,” said Kevin Grumbach, M.D., chair of the UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine at SFGH. “We’re developing new models of team-based care, where family doctors are working with nurses and community health workers, pharmacists and social workers to provide a comprehensive team model of care.”

Related: Family medicine residency at SFGH: Past, present and future (Click image to view story)

The UCSF SFGH program has an emphasis on training residents and students to work in partnership with patients. “The UCSF SFGH Family and Community Medicine Residency has a distinctive mission to prepare family physicians to care for families and underserved populations,” said Grumbach. “It marries the best of the academic attributes of UCSF with a mission-driven ethos of commitment to the public and health disparities that are part of SFGH and the San Francisco Department of Public Health.”

In addition to serving as a reunion to celebrate the accomplishments of the program’s graduates, a symposium on Saturday will provide an opportunity for alumni to weigh in on how to train the next generation of family physician leaders in delivering patient-centered, effective and affordable care.

The symposium also will draw leaders in primary care from across the country to learn about the future of primary care, training, community engagement and education. Keynote speaker Mary Wakefield, Ph.D., R.N., the administrator in the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will explain how HRSA works to fill in the health care gaps for people who are uninsured, isolated or medically vulnerable.

Educating future primary care physicians

With plummeting numbers of U.S. medical school graduates going into primary care fields, it’s more important than ever to support the specialty in a robust way.

“We need to rebuild what had been an inadequately supported primary care structure in the U.S.,” said Grumbach. “The last five years there has been a big wave of renewal of primary care and it is what feels like a Renaissance in family medicine. But before that there was a lack of investment in innovative models of modernizing care in primary care and things were languishing.”

People are very mindful of the lessons of Massachusetts when then they passed the Universal Coverage Act of 2006, according to Grumbach. “All these people were insured, but couldn’t find a primary care doctor or nurse practitioner to gain entry into the system. Now we have a potential influx of patients seeking care and we’re seeing this kind of medical homelessness where people are insured but can’t find a medical home to coordinate their care needs.”

Having a primary care doctor not only streamlines access for patients, but helps deliver a better value to the entire health care system. Understanding patients by taking a comprehensive medical history and performing thorough exams results in family practitioners knowing a patient’s underlying issues and understanding their physical and mental health. That, in turn, reduces extraneous testing and emergency services. “It’s about improving a patient’s wellbeing while reducing unnecessary costs,” Grumbach said.

Grumbach has seen the evolution of family medicine since his early days at UCSF when he was a resident in 1985. He still has a patient who was one of the first babies he delivered during his residency. “I’ve stayed all these years because I love the blend of the academic culture of UCSF with feeling so powerfully moved by attachment to people at SFGH,” he said.  “It’s one of the main things that keeps me here.”

UC Davis’ integrated residency options shorten training for vascular and thoracic surgery.

Melissa Loja has been chosen as one of the first residents in the integrated residency program in vascular surgery at UC Davis.

UC Davis School of Medicine offers two new integrated residency programs and a new fellowship program to train physicians for careers in vascular and thoracic surgery and meet the national need for highly trained surgical specialists who can treat diseases of the blood vessels, heart and lungs — leading causes of death and disability in the U.S.

The new residency programs — the first integrated residency options at UC Davis — merge general and subspecialty surgical training for vascular surgery into a single five-year program and for thoracic surgery into a six-year program. This is unique because traditional postgraduate education in these fields involves completing a general surgery residency followed by a subspecialty fellowship, often at separate institutions and lasting seven to 10 years beyond medical school.

“Medical school graduates who could be excellent vascular surgeons often select other medical specialties as careers due to the length of the training, especially because many need to start repaying medical school debts during their residencies,” said David Dawson, professor and director of the vascular surgery residency program with the UC Davis Vascular Center. “Our goal with the combined program is to attract those qualified candidates and provide them with the advanced, rigorous training they need to begin providing quality vascular care to patients as quickly as possible.”

For physicians who have completed general surgery programs, UC Davis also now offers a traditional two-year fellowship in vascular surgery.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, patient volume outpaces surgeon availability, and a significant shortage of 41,000 general and specialty surgeons is possible by 2025.

Integrated residency options are becoming common alternatives at academic medical centers to encourage interest in surgical specialties and close gaps in access to care. Residency directors like Dawson are pleased that these options are proving to be highly competitive, attracting high-achieving medical school graduates.

“There were 30 superbly qualified applicants for one of the new training positions — an embarrassment of riches,” said Dawson.

While most vascular surgery residencies accept one resident each year, the UC Davis program accepts two: one chosen by the U.S. Air Force and one selected through the traditional residency match system. A unique partnership between UC Davis and David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base provides shared training opportunities for physicians at both institutions.

“A powerful attraction of our physician training is the chance to gain experience in the working environments and practice procedures of all major health-care systems in our region, including the military health care system,” said Dawson. “The more diverse the training experiences, the more qualified the physicians.”

The first two residents in the integrated vascular surgery program are Melissa Loja from the UC Davis School of Medicine’s class of 2012, and Jason Nieves, a U.S. Air Force officer, who completes medical school at Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico in June. The first vascular surgery fellow is LeAnn Chavez, a general surgeon at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska. All three begin their UC Davis training in July.

The first integrated thoracic surgery residency program candidate will be selected from graduating medical school classes of 2013.

Vascular surgeons treat diseases of the blood vessels with the exception of procedures of the heart and brain. Vascular surgery includes endovascular procedures such as angioplasty and the placement of stents to open blocked arteries or veins, a growing need due to the proliferation of peripheral vascular disease related to obesity and diabetes.

Thoracic surgeons perform complex procedures to treat diseases of the heart, lungs and esophagus. One of the most common is coronary artery bypass graft surgery, where diseased vessels are replaced with vessels from elsewhere in the body to restore healthy blood supply. In recent years, the field has become more complex, with the advent of robotic surgery and advanced devices like mechanical heart pumps, which expand options for those unable to have heart transplants.

“It’s an exciting, dynamic field that requires a combination of compassion, engineering, strategic planning, skill and dexterity,” said David Cooke, assistant professor and associate director of the thoracic surgery residency program at UC Davis. “Unfortunately, academic medical centers nationwide haven’t been successful in recruiting enough physicians to take up the challenges of the field.”

National Resident Matching Program data shows that 24 percent of the 102 available postgraduate training positions in thoracic surgery were unfilled in 2011.

“We are hopeful that integrated training options will make the field more competitive, especially for women, who now make up nearly half of all medical school graduates and are typically not attracted to specialties with extended training times,” said Cooke. “This is especially important as the population ages and diseases of the heart, blood vessels and lungs become even more common.”

Information on the new residency programs is available on the web at www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/surgery/education/vascular_surgery_residency.html and www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/surgery/education/cardio.html.

Offering top-quality graduate medical education is integral to UC Davis Health System’s goals of assuring a physician workforce that is fully prepared to address the nation’s evolving health-care needs and broaden access to quality health care for all. Residencies or fellowships are offered in nearly 100 specialty and subspecialty fields, from emergency medicine to pathology and from developmental-behavioral pediatrics to ophthalmology. All UC Davis postmedical school training fosters excellence in medical practice and meets the nation’s highest standards for graduate medical education. For information, visit www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/gme.

More information on the UC Davis School of Medicine is available at medschool.ucdavis.edu.

Impact includes caring for uninsured patients, training professionals and conducting research.

For the first time, University of California Health has measured the collective impact it has in caring for uninsured patients, educating tomorrow’s health leaders and advancing science to tackle medicine’s toughest challenges.

The estimated community benefit of UC Health’s five medical centers totaled $3.3 billion last year.

“As a public university and cornerstone of the safety net, UC Health is committed to serve California’s health needs,” said Dr. John Stobo, UC senior vice president for health sciences and services.” Our combined community benefit demonstrates the powerful impact UC Health has as a system.”

Throughout UC Health, student-run clinics collaborate across their campuses and within their communities to treat patients from the working poor to the homeless and their pets. UC’s three nurse-run clinics provide compassionate care to underserved patients in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Francisco. UC’s innovative Programs in Medical Education (PRIME) train doctors where they are most needed with programs focused on rural health and telemedicine (UC Davis), the Latino community (UC Irvine), the diverse disadvantaged (UCLA, UC Riverside), the San Joaquin Valley (UC Merced, UC Davis, UCSF), health equity (UC San Diego), and the urban underserved (UCSF, UC Berkeley).

UC Health has the nation’s largest health sciences educational system, with 18 professional schools and programs on seven campuses. Its community impact is felt in all corners of the state, through telemedicine services, clinical trials, classroom collaborations and affiliations such as UCLA’s partnership with the Venice Family Clinic, the nation’s largest free clinic.

Community benefits include programs or activities that improve access to care, enhance community health, advance medical knowledge and reduce the burden of government or other community efforts.

Here is a breakdown of UC Health’s community benefit in fiscal 2011, with totals from the health sciences campuses that have medical centers – UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Diego and UCSF:

-Charity care and unreimbursed care: $560.7 million
Free medical services for patients who had no source of payment for urgently needed care and the unpaid cost of Medicare, Medi-Cal, State Children’s Health Insurance Program, indigent care programs and other safety net programs.

-Education: $174.7 million
Health professions education encompasses teaching physicians, nurses and students as well as scholarships and funding for education.

-Donations/sponsorships: $1.8 million
Through financial and in-kind contributions, UC Health offers support to community organizations to improve community health.

-Research: $2.6 billion
UC research gives local residents access to the latest treatments and therapies for advanced illness and complex health conditions.

For more information, view UC Health’s community impact brochure.

Related links:

• UC Davis community benefit report
• UC San Diego community benefit fact sheet
• UCSF: committed to the city
  

UC medical students find out where they have been accepted for their residencies.

On March 16, more than 650 UC medical students found out where they have been “matched” — which hospital has accepted them for residency to get advanced training in their chosen specialty.

At UCLA, aspiring doctors eased their anxiety by participating in a flash mob, spontaneously joining a dance choreographed to Chris Brown’s pulsating “3xYeah,” with the loudest cheers at the end when Senior Associate Dean Dr. Neil Parker and Student-Affairs Director Meredith Szumski danced, too.

At UC San Diego, medical student Melanie Aiken, a 41-year-old, single mother of three daughters, found out that she will continue at UC San Diego for her residency.  “I think if I had applied 10 or 15 years ago to medical school, I might not have been so well-received,” she said. “But the profession is changing. The doctors and professors at school are more appreciative these days of the life experience that older students can bring to the table.”

Students from medical schools at UC Davis, UC Irvine and UC San Francisco – and around the country – also were matched.

UC San Francisco medical students (from left) Brittany Grovey, Damien Richardson and Sami Lubega congratulate each other after finding out their residency placements on Match Day.

“Every doctor remembers their Match Day,” said Dr. Maxine Papadakis, assistant dean of students at UCSF School of Medicine. “It’s a moment when students know what their future will bring after medical school.”

Match Day is an important milestone – “the culmination of four years of hard work in which our students developed the skills, knowledge and values to improve the lives of others,” said Mark Servis, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and senior associate dean for curriculum and competency development at the UC Davis School of Medicine.” Through their strength, confidence and determination, they will discover the next generation of treatments and become future leaders in the field.”

View stories, photos and videos of Match Day:

• UC Davis
• UC Irvine
• UCLA
• UC San Diego
• UCSF
  

U.S. News ranks UCSF pharmacy school first, UC medical schools near top.

University of California Health ranked among the nation’s best graduate schools in a survey released today (March 13) by U.S. News & World Report.

All five UC medical schools placed in the top 50 nationally for research rankings and four placed in the top 30 nationally for primary care rankings.

In research, UC San Francisco was the top-ranked public school and fifth among all U.S. schools, with UCLA 13th overall, UC San Diego tied for 16th, UC Davis tied for 42nd and UC Irvine tied for 44th. In primary care, UCSF tied for third, UCLA ranked 10th, UC Davis tied for 24th and UC San Diego tied for 27th. UCSF has the only medical school ranked in the top five of both categories.

Also, UCSF ranked first in pharmacy and UCLA first in clinical psychology while UC medical schools received high marks in a number of specialty programs. UCSF ranked first in AIDS, second in women’s health, third in internal medicine, tied for third in family medicine, sixth in drug/alcohol abuse, ninth in geriatrics and tied for 10th in pediatrics. UCLA ranked third in geriatrics, sixth in AIDS and seventh in drug/alcohol abuse. UC San Diego ranked eighth in AIDS and in drug/alcohol abuse. UC Davis tied for ninth in rural medicine.

U.S. News’ 2013 America’s Best Graduate Schools rankings were released online today (March 13) and can be viewed at www.usnews.com/grad.

The new rankings include previous assessments of a number of other health fields, which U.S. News also surveys but not each year. UC Davis ranked second in veterinary medicine, UCSF ranked tied for fourth in overall nursing, while in public health UC Berkeley tied for eighth and UCLA was 10th. The surveys do not rank dental or optometry schools.

UC Health runs five medical centers and the nation’s largest health sciences education system with more than 14,000 students and 18 health professional schools and programs in medicine, dentistry, nursing, optometry, pharmacy, public health and veterinary medicine.

Related links:

• UC Davis
• UCLA
• UC San Diego
• UC San Francisco 

All five receive “A” grades on PharmFree Scorecard.

All five UC schools of medicine rank among the top medical schools on the 2012 American Medical Student Association (AMSA) PharmFree Scorecard, a national assessment of medical school policies governing how the pharmaceutical industry interacts with faculty and students.

UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC San Francisco all received an “A” rating on the scorecard. UC Davis has received every year since AMSA established the scorecard in 2007. Of the 152 U.S. medical schools and colleges of osteopathic medicine included in the report, 28 received As (18 percent) 74 Bs (49 percent), 15 Cs (10 percent), and 13 Ds (9 percent) and nine Fs (6 percent).

The AMSA PharmFree Scorecard uses letter grades to assess a school’s performance in 11 potential areas of conflict, including gifts and meals from industry to doctor; paid promotional speaking for industry; acceptance of free drug samples; interaction with sales representatives and industry; and funded education. It offers a comprehensive look at the current and changing landscape of conflict-of-interest policies across American medical education, as well as more in-depth assessment of individual policies that govern industry interaction. The report included 98 percent of all eligible medical institutions in the United States.

UC Davis’ policies scored highest in six specific domains AMSA assessed, including policies related to acceptance of gifts and meals from industry; limiting pharmaceutical samples accepted; individuals with financial conflicts participating in university purchasing decisions; financial support for attending industry-sponsored lectures and meetings (off-campus); industry support for scholarships and trainee funds; and inclusion of education about conflict of interest within the academic curriculum. The report also noted the presence of oversight and sanctions for noncompliance, although these factors were not included in the grade calculation.

Other schools receiving an A grade included UCLA, UC San Francisco, UC Irvine and UC San Diego, which adopted strong policies modeled after those first introduced at UC Davis, as well as the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the University of Pennsylvania.

According to AMSA, the PharmFree Scorecard reflects the growing public outcry over conflicts of interest, both real and perceived, that are occurring throughout the health care industry. The organization notes the increasing concerns among the public, policymakers and medical professionals focused on the potential for these conflicts to influence medical care, with profit potentially taking precedence over the interests of patients. A major part of the national discussion aims to balance the benefits of industry partnerships with the risks of industry marketing adversely impacting medical care, clinical research and medical education.