New program to offer master’s degrees to help increase number of primary care providers.

Klea Bertakis, UC Davis

Already, a majority of UC Davis nurse practitioner and physician assistant graduates go on to work as primary care providers in underserved areas and with hopes of further increasing these rates, the program will offer master’s degrees beginning with classes that enroll this summer.

“UC Davis has a rich legacy of training culturally diverse primary care providers, especially for rural areas of California” said Klea Bertakis, chair of the UC Davis School of Medicine Family and Community Medicine Department, which has housed the program for the past 40 years. “We needed to find a way to continue that and sustain the program. It was clear the program needed to provide its graduates master’s degrees.”

Looming health care reforms, shortages of providers and a growing, aging population combine to create unprecedented demand for primary care providers throughout the nation, especially in rural and underserved areas. Additionally, about 6 million California residents are expected to gain access to health care through national health care reform when it is fully implemented in 2016.

Over the past 40 years, the program graduated 1,800 nurse practitioners and physician assistants, with 67 percent of graduates working in underserved areas. Additionally, nearly 70 percent of graduates work in primary care, compared to much lower national averages of between 30 and 40 percent.

Bertakis said the new master’s-degree programs are the result of a yearlong study of approaches to refine the successful program and meet future educational needs of nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Currently, the program offers graduate certificates to both the family nurse practitioner and physician assistant tracks. Master’s degrees are required to earn a nurse practitioner license and students achieved this through a unique agreement with California State University, Sacramento. This, however, required students to apply and pay fees at both universities.

UC Davis leaders also needed to prepare for accreditation changes that require master’s degrees for physician assistant programs by 2021. Already, 92 percent of the nation’s physician assistant programs offer master’s degrees.

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Recipients include 17 student and junior faculty from seven UC campuses.

UC Berkeley student Jade Benjamin-Chung is among the 17 UC Global Health Institute 2013 fellows.

The UC Global Health Institute has announced the awardees of the 2013 Student and Junior Faculty Fellowships. Through the generous support of a private donor, the institute established this funding opportunity for graduate and professional students and junior faculty to undertake well-defined, time-limited, transdisciplinary global health projects.

The 17 fellowship awardees come from seven UC campuses and include 11 students and six junior faculty members or teams. All projects directly address the annual objectives of one or more of the institute’s three Centers of Expertise (COE) through education, research, partnership development and/or innovative uses of technology.

Projects range from an investigation of respiratory diseases in people and endangered primates in Rwanda, to an identification of barriers to postpartum uptake of contraceptives in Nairobi, to an investigation of diet change in Latino immigrants.

Read about the awardees and their diverse projects on the UC Global Health Institute’s website.

Related link:
Register for UC Global Health Day, Feb. 23, UC Riverside

Faculty strengthen relationship with students through advisory colleges.

Mentor Larry Hill with student Danielle Cipres

When Noriko Anderson became pregnant during her first year of medical school at UC San Francisco, she faced a number of difficult questions, including whether she could continue going to classes during her third trimester and how she would keep up in the weeks following the birth of her baby. So she turned to Ellen Hughes, M.D., Ph.D., her Advisory College mentor.

“She congratulated me and gave me her full support in whatever I decided to do,” said Anderson, now in her third year. “She encouraged me to make a plan for my second year. She advised me to study early for my Step 1 exam and helped me identify other faculty and staff who could help me. I ended up being able to study for six weeks between my first and second year to get ahead.”

Hughes is one of eight faculty mentors working with students through the School of Medicine’s “Advisory Colleges.” There are four Advisory Colleges, each led by two faculty mentors. Each mentor works with about 75 students.

The program is specifically designed to guide students through the wealth of course offerings, career options and clinical care settings available to them. But it is also designed to help the students develop closer relationships with faculty and other students, and to enhance their personal and professional development.

“By assigning them Advisory College mentors, UCSF is basically saying, ‘we value this relationship. We’re going to help you get started,’” Hughes said.

UCSF’s medical student mentoring program is part of a “broader effort to create and support a culture of mentorship at the university,” said Mitchell Feldman, M.D., M.Phil., who is the associate vice provost for faculty mentoring and the co-director of the CTSI Mentor Development Program.

It is also part of a national trend toward providing more support for medical students. “Many medical schools are trying out models,” said Maxine Papadakis, M.D., the School of Medicine’s associate dean for student affairs. “It’s a challenging area, because it can be hard to provide the right kind of mentoring and support for many students with differing needs. But lots of medical schools are experimenting with this now.”

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UC Davis to enhance curriculum, expand community engagement, student recruitment efforts.

Tom Balsbaugh (center) with UC Davis residents

The California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) has awarded more than $300,000 to UC Davis training programs that help ensure a robust primary health care workforce in California.

Through the Song-Brown Program, OSHPD provided the university’s Family and Community Medicine Residency Program with $206,460 and its Family Nurse Practitioner and Physician Assistant Program with $135,000. The funding will be used to expand community engagement and student recruitment efforts and to enhance curriculum in the “medical home” concept of team-based, coordinated patient care, an approach that improves outcomes while lowering costs.

“Song-Brown funding helps ensure that we remain at the forefront of state and national efforts to meet the primary care needs of diverse populations and improve access to comprehensive, culturally appropriate care for everyone,” said Tom Balsbaugh, UC Davis associate clinical professor and director of the Family and Community Medicine Residency Program.

While interest in primary care residencies has decreased nationwide, that trend is reversing at UC Davis, Balsbaugh explained. In 2012, the American Academy of Family Physicians ranked UC Davis 12th among U.S. medical schools in the percentage of graduates selecting a career focus in primary care, which includes pediatrics, internal medicine and family medicine. UC Davis was also the only California medical school included among the top 20.

“The increasing number of medical students at UC Davis selecting primary care residencies in recent years is very encouraging, and funding like the OSHPD grants are critical to keeping that momentum going,” said Balsbaugh.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. is expected to have a shortage of 45,000 primary care physicians by the end of the decade. In California — with current shortages of primary care physicians in most of its counties, the nation’s largest percentage of practicing primary care physicians nearing retirement and more rural, inner urban and fast-growing communities than other states — the deficit is expected to be more pronounced.

To help bridge that care gap, UC Davis also provides top-quality graduate-level education for family nurse practitioners and physician assistants — practitioners who can examine, diagnose and treat patients as part of a health care team.

“These providers are uniquely positioned to improve access to preventive, chronic disease management and acute health care services, especially for vulnerable populations,” said Debra Bakerjian, assistant adjunct professor at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing and vice chair for the Family Nurse Practitioner and Physician Assistant Program at UC Davis. “They can also ease the primary care shortage sooner, since their training time is compressed.”

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UC medical schools make progress in attracting underrepresented minority students.

Nicholas Orozco

>>Motion graphic: California medical school first-year enrollments of underrepresented minorities

By Alec Rosenberg

Nicholas Orozco grew up in urban, predominantly Latino East Los Angeles, where obesity rates are high and access to health care is low.

Laura Jordan grew up on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in rural Humboldt County, where tribe members face health issues from diabetes to heart disease but the nearest hospital is 90 minutes away.

While their backgrounds vary widely, they share a common passion: wanting to practice family medicine in an underserved community such as their hometowns. Both are first-generation collegians who received a head start through University of California postbaccalaureate programs aimed at preparing disadvantaged students for medical school. And now both are UC medical students participating in PRIME programs that train physicians to meet the needs of California’s underserved rural and urban populations – Orozco at UC Berkeley-UC San Francisco and Jordan at UC Davis.

UC’s postbaccalaureate and PRIME programs are two contributing reasons that UC has steadily increased medical student diversity. Among first-year UC medical students, underrepresented minorities have risen to more than 24 percent of students this year, up from 14 percent in 2001 and topping rates at California’s private medical schools and the national average. That’s still short of matching the state’s diverse population, but UC medical schools come closer than many other graduate and professional schools.

“PRIME may serve as a model for other professions that are laboring to achieve more diversity in their student bodies,” said Dr. John Stobo, UC Health senior vice president. “Here’s an exemplary case of what education can do in the context of legislation that prohibits affirmative action.”

UC can’t consider race or gender in admissions after a policy passed by regents in 1995 and California voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996, but it can have programs aimed at students from disadvantaged backgrounds. More than half of PRIME students are from groups traditionally underrepresented in medicine. The systemwide initiative, launched in 2004 at UC Irvine, has grown to 336 students and now involves eight UC campuses – the first substantial increase in UC medical school enrollment in 40 years.

“PRIME is a major innovation in medical education,” said Dr. Charles Vega, director of UC Irvine’s PRIME program. “I believe it’s the way to spread well-being across the state in a meaningful way.”

Orozco faced many challenges growing up in East Los Angeles, including his family lacking health insurance. He earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA but struggled academically, working 60 hours a week while also attending to family issues. He participated in UCSF’s postbaccalaureate program, receiving support that led to enrolling in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program in PRIME.

Now a second-year student, Orozco has observed prison health care at San Quentin, received training at an urban clinic in Oakland and established, in partnership with another PRIME student and the Pacific Center, an LGBT free drop-in clinic in Berkeley. The clinic provides primary care to low-income clients and tries to connect them with relevant social services. “The PRIME program and postbaccalaureate program represent opportunities to work with different communities and create an environment for people to give back and affect change,” Orozco said.

Laura Jordan

Inspiring others

Jordan became interested in rural medicine while working in high school at the medical clinic on her hometown Indian reservation, where family and community members suffered from chronic conditions and had limited access to specialty care. “I saw a need,” she said.

Mentored by the clinic’s medical director and encouraged by her parents, Jordan graduated from Humboldt State University and then participated in UC Davis’ postbaccalaureate program for help in preparing for medical school. Despite being the only Native American student in her class at the time, she chose to attend medical school at UC Davis for its Rural PRIME program and its support network.

“I knew medical school was going to be difficult,” Jordan said. “They tell you it’s like drinking water from a fire hose, and it is. Once I got used to the pace, it got easier.”

Jordan helped inspire five other Native American students to attend the UC Davis School of Medicine. Now in her third year, she is hitting her stride, receiving a scholarship from the federal Indian Health Service and getting hands-on experience working at rural health clinics in Redding.

“Laura’s a good example of what we’re trying to do, which is raise people who are going to go back to the communities that need them,” said Dr. Mark Henderson, associate dean for admissions and outreach at the UC Davis School of Medicine.

Henderson praised the PRIME programs – UC Davis offers a rural program and a San Joaquin Valley program with UC Merced – along with TEACH-MS, a four-year federally supported program for medical students with a strong interest in primary care and care for the urban underserved. “The focus is on continuity of care,” he said, noting that UC Davis’ medical school also has increased its support staff and broadened the way it reviews applicants.

“We have to look holistically at each candidate,” Henderson said. “We have to evaluate whether we are choosing the right kinds of students to meet the physician workforce needs of California.”

(Click image for larger view)

A broader approach

UC Davis has joined UCLA in using the multiple mini interview, or MMI, with medical student candidates. The short assessments take into consideration communications skills, critical thinking and cultural sensitivity – a broader approach that has helped attract more diverse students, administrators say.

“I call it speed dating,” said Dr. Neil Parker, senior associate dean for student affairs and graduate medical education at UCLA’s medical school. “It doesn’t take you long when you meet somebody to get the gestalt of, ‘Hey, I’d like to know this person.’”

Diversity begets more diversity, Parker said. Through programs like PRIME and supporting student groups, UCLA has created a comfortable environment for diverse students, he said.

Still, barriers exist. A big one is cost. The average U.S. medical student’s debt load has risen above $166,000. Entertainment executive and philanthropist David Geffen donated $100 million to establish a fund that will award merit-based scholarships to up to 33 UCLA medical students a year, which should help address that issue. “I think some of the students we normally lose will come here,” Parker said. “I think our applicant pool will become larger and more diverse.”

A new model

Meanwhile, UC Riverside – the eighth-most diverse campus in the nation – is making diversity a cornerstone of its new medical school, which is opening this fall. It’s viewed as part of its mission to improve the health of the Inland Empire, whose population is nearly half Latino.

“I think there’s real value in diversity,” said UC Riverside medical school founding Dean G. Richard Olds. “Having health care professionals that come from our communities is a desirable thing. It’s what the patients want. It results in better health care.”

“The two main determinants of where doctors practice are where they grow up and where they do their residencies,” Olds said. The medical school will provide campuswide pre-med advising and is setting aside 24 slots of its initial 50-student class for UC Riverside undergraduates. Admissions will use the MMI and look at four measures designed to enhance diversity: students who are local, from disadvantaged backgrounds, are first generation collegians and speak English as a second language.

UC Riverside also will be building its own local residency programs. Using a new model, UC Riverside will be California’s first public medical school to open in four decades, the sixth in the UC system and the only community-based medical school in the West Coast. While UC Riverside won’t have a PRIME program per se, “Our entire program looks like the PRIME program,” Olds said.

Martín Escandón

A positive influence

A UC San Diego study of applicants to its medical school found that underrepresented minorities and disadvantaged students were more likely to be interested in a curriculum designed to train them to work with underserved communities. The findings, published in the journal Academic Medicine, suggest that programs such as PRIME may influence the application decisions of diverse students.

That’s certainly the case of second-year UCSF medical student Martín Escandón.

After graduating from the University of Washington, Escandón worked for AmeriCorps in Seattle’s predominantly Latino South Park neighborhood. He saw that many health issues were related to social problems, such as treating a 4-year-old asthmatic boy who lived in an industrial area filled with bad air. “The doctor said, ‘Why did he get asthma in the first place?’ It was hard to ignore.” Driven by a passion for family medicine, a sense of social justice and a belief that health care is a human right, Escandón called UCSF’s PRIME program “a perfect fit.”

“PRIME is the best part of medical school,” Escandón said. “PRIME is a place to focus on what I think are the most important things – community health, preventive medicine, advocacy for patients.”

Making a difference

“PRIME really speaks to students about why they’re going into medicine,” said Dr. Alma Martinez, UCSF medical school outreach director and PRIME executive director.

Martinez said the campus climate is more welcoming now than when she was a UCSF medical student. She credits the students, leadership and programs such as PRIME, postbaccalaureate efforts and the Doctors Academy, founded by UCSF Fresno Dr. Katherine Flores to prepare disadvantaged Fresno County high school students for college and for health science careers.

But all of those programs struggle financially. UCSF medical school’s postbaccalaureate program had 15 students at its peak. It has fallen to eight students, but will rise back up to 12 students, thanks to funding from Kaiser Permanente.

“We’re always fighting to find money,” Martinez said.

The next step is to expand these types of programs not only in California, but nationally, she said.

“It’s not enough to just attract diverse students to one location without increasing the entire pool,” Martinez said. “I think all schools should be working on outreach and postbaccalaureate programs to get more students. Every medical school needs to develop a postbaccalaureate program. If each school had eight to 12 students, that would make a difference.”

Related link:
UC San Diego to host medical education for diverse students conference Jan. 26

Olivia Marie Campa will receive award from the American Medical Association Foundation.

Olivia Marie Campa, UC Davis

Olivia Marie Campa, a third-year medical student at UC Davis, will receive the American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation’s 2013 Leadership Award for outstanding non-clinical leadership skills in advocacy, community service and education at the foundation’s annual Excellence in Medicine Awards ceremony on Feb. 11 in Washington, D.C.

Campa is one of 20 medical students, residents, fellows and early-career physicians from around the country to receive the leadership award, which provides special training to further develop skills as future leaders in medicine and community affairs.

Campa has distinguished herself as a leader working to reduce inequities in health care and to create educational opportunities for populations underrepresented in medicine, particularly those in low-income communities. She co-directed Clinica Tepati, a nonprofit, community-run clinic that provides free health care services to uninsured, socioeconomically disadvantaged and medically underserved Latinos in the Sacramento area.

Campa also serves as the mentorship chair of the Latino Medical Association, reaching out to undergraduates and students from low-income families to encourage them to pursue their professional dreams. As an aspiring academic clinician, she participates in research focused on improving care for underserved populations, including incarcerated women with mental illness.

Earlier this year, the Association of American Medical Colleges honored Campa with the Herbert W. Nickens Award for leadership efforts to eliminate inequities in medical education and health care.

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UCSF pathologist uses power of song to teach hard-to-learn facts.

Songs are a common tool to help preschool children learn the fundamentals, such as the alphabet.

One UC San Francisco professor is showing how the same approach can help learners at the opposite end of the educational spectrum: medical students, medical residents and other highly-trained professionals who need to continually memorize ever more fine details of human health and disease as they progress in their specialties.

While mastering an extensive command of gross and subtle human biology is more complex than memorizing the A-B-C’s, putting some of the most essential facts to music is a helpful way to learn, said Arie Perry, M.D., a professor of pathology and neurological surgery and the director of neuropathology at UCSF.

“People who sit through hundreds of hours of lectures and just go through rote memory over and over again might appreciate something different to help them learn,” Perry said.

He first began putting lyrics to music years ago to help people recognize how the signs of brain cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases can be seen under the microscope.

It began quite by accident, during his medical residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas: “We had a weekly conference where we presented cases to our attending [doctors],” he said. “One of the weeks, one of the attendings said that the residents weren’t entertaining enough.”

Perry aimed to correct this in the very next case he presented.

“The following week, I showed the glass slides under the microscope and then at the end of the presentation, I pulled out a guitar and I sang the ‘Schwannoma’ song,” he recalled. “By the end of the song, there were about two to three times as many people because everybody walking by the hallway came in.”

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On a mission.

Yoga at the UCLA Family Commons (click image for larger view)

From babies to high school students, University of California Health has outreach programs for all types of youths.

A block from the Santa Monica Promenade, the UCLA Family Commons offers family-centric programming such as family coaching, parent seminars, martial arts and baby-and-me music and yoga. The wellness center, welcoming clients with its bright colors and convenient location, was developed by researchers from UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. It has expanded to include a satellite site at Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Koreatown. “Everything we do is for parents and children,” Director Kelle Taylor said.

At UC Davis, outreach efforts for high schoolers include a medical student anatomy lab, mini medical school and summer scrubs academic preparation program. UC Davis’ Veterinary Student Outreach Club hosts a yearly Future Day for high school students to encourage interest in veterinary medicine through hands-on labs and engaging talks. The next one is scheduled for April 28.

UC Irvine has an outreach program that invites 20 students from each of Orange County’s high schools to participate in hands-on instruction using the latest in minimally invasive surgical equipment. A two-week summer premed program is for high school students interested in a career in medicine. Meanwhile, the ultrasound in medical education program offers middle school, high school and undergraduate students the opportunity to see how ultrasound technology is used in medicine and learn more about health care careers.

Through a grant from the Desert Healthcare District, the UC Riverside School of Medicine will partner with existing Coachella Valley initiatives to support students aspiring to careers in health care. This will include student outreach and enrichment programs that inspire students to pursue health care careers and enhance their competitiveness for professional health training programs such as medical school.

At UC San Diego, the HERE Initiative is a far-reaching outreach program designed to engage with historically underserved communities in the southern and southeastern regions of San Diego County. The initiative includes the Medical Pathway Program, which involves UC-approved science courses at various high schools.

In San Francisco, public school students are getting a double dose of service from UC campuses. At John O’Connell High, Emily Ozer encourages students to teach their teachers to be more effective, one of five such youth-led participatory programs in San Francisco high schools. Ozer, a UC Berkeley School of Public Health associate professor, said the programs show promise in improving the mental health and well-being of teens.

UCSF graduate student Charlie Morgan works with a student at Mission High in San Francisco. (Click image for larger view)

At Mission High, when UCSF graduate student Charlie Morgan first visited the campus dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, students told him he didn’t look like a scientist. That’s the point. UCSF is helping change the face of science through its award-winning Science and Health Education Partnership, which works with San Francisco public schools to support quality science education for K-12 students. At Mission, Morgan and UCSF postdoctoral fellow Norma Velazquez Ulloa teamed with teacher Becky Fulop’s biology class to engage in hands-on experiments with real-world relevance.

“I really appreciate the students having access to scientists who don’t look like what they may think the typical scientist looks like — young people, people of different ethnicities, people who look more like them,” Fulop said. “I want them to see the way science is really performed.”

Related links:

• UC Davis School of Medicine outreach
• UC Davis School of  Veterinary Medicine student outreach
• UC Irvine School of Medicine outreach
• UCLA Family Commons
• UCLA School of Dentistry student outreach
• UC Riverside School of Medicine outreach
• UC San Diego HERE Initiative
• UCSF Elev8
• UCSF Program for Investigation and Training for Careers in Health
• UCSF Science and Health Education Partnership
• UC Health community impact brochure

Includes exam rooms, patient simulators.

G. Richard Olds, dean of the UC Riverside School of Medicine, and Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown check out patient simulators at the School of Medicine Education Building.

Community supporters, elected officials and administrators gathered today (Dec. 13) to celebrate the second building affiliated with the UCR School of Medicine.

Visitors toured the School of Medicine Education Building that has been renovated and transformed with a medical simulation laboratory, a 100-seat lecture hall, 10 patient examination rooms and small group discussion rooms. It includes a wall in the entryway that has been dedicated to Dr. Thomas and Mrs. Salma Haider for their ongoing support for the School of Medicine.

“This facility is not merely a building, or a node in the network of campus research, it is the builder of dreams, a vehicle to serve the urgent needs of our community,” said Chancellor Timothy P. White in what is one of his last official appearances at UC Riverside before he goes to lead the California State University system. “From this building will emerge dozens of physicians trained on the ground in this area – many of them local residents, who understand the experiences and the cultures of their patients.”

Founding School of Medicine Dean and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs G. Richard Olds described the simulation lab, where students, much like airline pilots, will learn and practice their skills on patient simulators created to mimic medical conditions and scenarios they are likely to encounter in the practice of medicine.

“Yes, this building has lecture halls, but our lecture halls will be used to a lesser degree than traditional medical schools,” Olds said. “Instead, we devoted a larger amount of square feet to small rooms, we call them Problem-Based Learning rooms, where students will actively solve problems, gaining and applying medical knowledge as they will need to when they become practicing physicians.”

Former state Assembly Member Wilmer Amina Carter noted that the mission of the UCR medical school to diversify the local physician workforce and to improve the health of people living in the region is consistent with the needs of Inland Southern California and the state. “This is a stunning achievement for the campus, its supporters and the community,” she said.

Former state Sen. Denise Ducheny, whose former district included the diverse and medically underserved eastern Coachella Valley, spoke of her desire for the area’s youth to receive their medical education at UCR and return to serve their communities. “Four years from now I will come back for the (first) graduating class,” she said.

Other officials who attended included:  newly elected state Sen. Richard Roth; returning Assemblymen V. Manuel Perez, Mike Morrell and Brian Nestande;  and newly elected Assemblymembers Jose Medina and  Cheryl Brown.

Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone  represented the entire Board of Supervisors, who provided financial support from the county, as did newly seated Riverside Mayor Rusty Bailey and City Councilman Andy Melendrez. The city and the Chamber of Commerce are longtime supporters of the School of Medicine.

The UCR School of Medicine is currently accepting applications for its first class of M.D. students. It is listed on the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS), the national central application processing service.

The foundation of the UCR School of Medicine is the UCR/UCLA Thomas Haider Program in Biomedical Sciences, which for more than 30 years has partnered with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA to train physicians. Students enrolled in the current program complete their first two years of medical school at UCR before transferring to the UCLA medical school to complete their final two years and receive their M.D. degrees. The UCR School of Medicine will offer all four years of medical education.

Establishment of the UCR School of Medicine was approved by the University of California Board of Regents in July 2008 and Olds, the founding dean, was appointed in February 2010. Two UCR buildings are completed and ready to accept new medical students and new faculty – the new School of Medicine Research Building and the renovated School of Medicine Education Building.

The medical school also operates a Ph.D. program in biomedical sciences, a long-standing graduate degree program at UCR. Additionally, the medical school will develop a range of residency training programs, the post-M.D. education required for doctors to become board certified in their specialties.

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California College DUI Awareness Project to continue at UC Irvine.

The California College DUI Awareness Project, designed to raise awareness about the dangers of drunk driving and reward designated drivers, will continue for a fourth year at the University of California, Irvine, thanks to a $344,000 grant renewal from the California Office of Traffic Safety, via federal funding from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

UCI’s Health Education Center and its partner, RADD – the entertainment industry’s voice for road safety – will continue to expand the project. The goal is to combine environmental, marketing and educational strategies to reduce alcohol-related motor vehicle deaths and injuries among people 18 to 34 years old.

RADD’s Designated Driver Rewards Program recruits local bars and restaurants to provide incentives to designated drivers, such as free nonalcoholic beverages and appetizers. The program, which currently involves 16 college campuses across the state (with a goal of reaching 20 campuses), has been renewed through September 2013.

The participating campuses are responsible for promoting the RADD Designated Driver Rewards Program to students through outreach efforts and community events. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently lauded RADD’s work in a report showing that DUI deaths in California had declined from 950 in 2009 to a record low of 791 in 2010.

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New gift will provide four-year financial support for up to 33 M.D. students.

Entertainment executive and philanthropist David Geffen has established an unprecedented $100 million scholarship fund that will cover the entire cost of education for the very best medical students attending the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM). The school was named in his honor after his $200 million unrestricted gift in 2002. With this recent gift, Geffen’s total philanthropic support to UCLA exceeds $300 million, making him the largest individual donor to UCLA and to any single UC campus.

The David Geffen Medical Scholarship Fund, conceived by Geffen and announced today (Dec. 13) by Dr. A. Eugene Washington, vice chancellor for health sciences and dean of the medical school, ensures that DGSOM will have students who graduate from medical school debt-free, allowing them to pursue lifesaving research and patient care without the economic burdens that restrict the choices of many young physicians and scientists.

“The cost of a world-class medical education should not deter our future innovators, doctors and scientists from the path they hope to pursue,” Geffen said. “We need the students at this world-class institution to be driven by determination and the desire to do their best work and not by the fear of crushing debt. I hope in doing this that others will be inspired to do the same.”

“With this game-changing gift, Mr. Geffen has invested in the medical education and training of some of the world’s brightest and most talented young people, influencing medical research and patient care for generations to come,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “We are inspired by his vision and grateful for his generosity, which places UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine at the forefront in the competitive marketplace for top medical school applicants and enhances health care and biomedical research for generations.”

“Once again, David Geffen has made a transformative gift — in this case, one that shifts how we think about support for our medical students,” Washington said. “The David Geffen Medical Scholarship Fund is an extraordinary investment in a public institution that will enhance UCLA’s ability to create world leaders in health and science. Recipients of this prestigious award will proudly carry the David Geffen Medical Scholar designation with them throughout their careers as they create an enduring legacy of excellence and impact in 21st-century patient care, medical education and research.”

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), 86 percent of medical school graduates had educational debt in 2012 — with an average debt of $170,000. Studies have shown that debt has a significant impact on what field medical school graduates pursue and where they develop their professional careers. Reducing that debt burden promises to allow talented students to make career decisions based on where their passions lie.

The annual cost of tuition, fees and health insurance for a UCLA medical student in 2012–13 is approximately $38,000. When factoring in room and board, books and supplies, and other miscellaneous costs, the total tab is $67,000. With these costs continuing to rise, the projected four-year cost for students entering the school in 2013–14 is more than $300,000.

The $100 million David Geffen Medical Scholarship Fund will provide four-year financial support — covering 100 percent of tuition, room and board, books and supplies, and other expenses — for up to 33 M.D. students (representing 20 percent of the available spots), starting with the entering class of 2013–14. Included in this group will be those students pursuing an eight-year M.D.–Ph.D. educational track as part of UCLA’s renowned Medical Scientist Training Program. All the David Geffen Medical Scholarships will be awarded based on merit.

Assistance for such students is designed to draw more outstanding young people to the medical profession. The AAMC estimates that the nation will face a shortage of more than 90,000 physicians by 2020. Adding to the urgency is the aging U.S. population — approximately 10,000 people a day will turn 65 for the next two decades — and the estimated 32 million people who will be added to the ranks of the insured in 2014 as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the federal health care law signed in 2010.

UCLA’s medical school receives less than 10 percent of its funding from the state. The school relies on funding from research grants, patient care revenue and philanthropic donations to fulfill its four-part mission of research, education, community engagement and patient care.

Each year, more than 7,500 candidates apply for the school’s 163 coveted first-year positions. The David Geffen Medical Scholarships will ensure significantly higher rates of acceptance and enrollment at UCLA among the nation’s most competitively recruited medical school applicants.

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Related links:

• Fact sheet
• Admissions

Education draws on evidence-based needs for advanced practice nurses.

At Glide Health Services, UCSF student Adrienne Franzese meets with medical assistant Sosefina Tagalu.

When Adrienne Franzese started her master’s degree studies at UC San Francisco School of Nursing, she wanted to learn how to help people with mental illness cope with chronic pain.

Her interest grew during her first year of residency at Glide Health Services, a UCSF nurse practitioner-managed clinic in San Francisco’s tough Tenderloin neighborhood. As with the other 116 million Americans with chronic pain, the nearly 50 patients in Glide’s pain management program can’t rely on opioids as a permanent solution to end suffering. The drugs may lose their effectiveness as patients build tolerance. Addiction is a risk.

Plus, Glide’s patients present unique challenges. Many are poor, some are homeless, and they often have other health issues, including mental illness. Glide’s clinicians need to know as much as they can about a patient’s life outside the clinic, so that they can design an effective pain management plan. With that knowledge, they will typically employ a multimodal approach to pain management: medication plus non-pharmaceutical interventions such as physical therapy, stress reduction, support groups and counseling.

A new, two-quarter project planning course in the School of Nursing, Evidence-Based Practice for Advanced Practice Nurses, is giving Franzese the opportunity to test an idea to improve care. Her project exemplifies the goals of the newly revised master’s curriculum at the School of Nursing.

Franzese’s class is one of several that the nursing school introduced last fall as part of an initiative to update the curriculum for master of science (MS) students. The purpose of the revision, led by a task force that included faculty, students and administrators, is to develop and implement an effective and efficient curriculum for future master’s-prepared students, so that they can provide high-quality, patient-centered care.

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