Diversity Hub

The UCSF School of Medicine offers a comprehensive, structured post baccalaureate graduate certificate program designed for individuals who have been unsuccessful in gaining admission to medical school or who have completed the required undergraduate course work but feel they need more background before initiating the medical school application process. We are interested in individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds or underserved communities. The UCSF program is designed to help individuals increase their chances of gaining admission to medical school by offering intensive MCAT review, assistance with medical school application preparation, science courses at UC Berkeley Extension, seminars on health care issues in underserved communities, and academic skills workshops.

Our mission is to provide access to quality health care for underserved people of California. This is accomplished by linking academic training programs with training sites in urban and rural underserved areas of the state such as community clinics and health centers, hospitals and other community based sites. The California AHEC has 13 centers, each responsible for a geographic service area in an urban or rural part of the state. Each center develops its own programs based on the needs of their service area and include continuing education for health professionals and staff working in underserved communities; rotations and other community experiences for health professions students and residents and youth health careers programs for underrepresented minority and other disadvantaged K-14 students. Each of these programs seeks to train future HPs, recruit and retain health professionals for community clinics and health centers and other types of sites that provide medical/dental and behavioral health services to the underserved populations of CA.

The UC Davis - UC Merced San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education (SJV PRIME) is an innovative approach to training future physicians, a pathway that will emphasize quality of care anchored in community-based research and educational experiences. The diversity of the San Joaquin Valley, including health systems, diverse patient populations and broad community partnerships, is a core component of the effort to improve the health and health care of the region. The SJV PRIME program is a collaboration between the UC Davis School of Medicine, UC Merced and UCSF Fresno, to train the next generation of San Joaquin Valley physicians. It seeks to increase the diversity of the medical profession and remedy the uneven distribution of physicians in California. SJV PRIME is a tailored clinical track at the UC Davis School of Medicine for medical students who are committed to ensuring high quality, diverse and well distributed medical care to improve health for populations, communities, and individuals in California's San Joaquin Valley.

The program creates defined educational paths so that individuals can develop focused teaching skills and receive a certificate in recognition of achievement. The program is open to current and future faculty at UCSF and at affiliated institutions (i.e., residents, fellows, volunteer faculty). Participants complete specific sets of UCSF Educational Skills Workshops. Credit toward the certificate is given after demonstration of competence through assessments that are completed during each workshop. Currently, certificate tracks include: 1) General Teaching; 2) Clinical Teaching; 3) Simulation Teaching; 4) Interprofessional Teaching; 5) Teaching Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (QI/PS); 6) Education Leadership.