Press Releases: Southern California
June 4, 2009
Medical Students Providing Care in Underserved Communities Awarded Kaiser Permanente Scholarships
Kaiser Permanente mentoring and scholarship program prepares next generation of MDs for communities with diverse populations
PASADENA, Calif. — Kaiser Permanente Southern California awarded mentoring scholarships today to 12 medical students committed to providing high-quality and culturally-responsive care to Southern California’s uniquely diverse patient population. Each awardee will participate in a mentoring program with a Kaiser Permanente clinician, complete a 4 – 6 week clinical rotation at a Kaiser Permanente facility, and receive a $5,000 scholarship for their education.
The Kaiser Permanente Oliver Goldsmith, MD, Scholarship program is dedicated to the promotion and advancement of culturally responsive care. Dr. Goldsmith, who championed this guiding principle throughout his career at Kaiser Permanente, retired as the medical director of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group in 2003. Since it was established in 2004, the program has now awarded 53 scholarships for a total of $265,000 in community benefit funds to assist medical students.
“The future of health care depends on a continuing stream of bright young people entering the system who want to do good,” said Jeffrey Weisz, MD, executive medical director of SCPMG, and creator of the scholarship program. “These awardees have those qualities and more. These exemplary medical students are a promising group, and fostering their development will benefit the diverse patient populations they will one day serve.”
Kaiser Permanente continues Dr. Goldsmith’s instrumental efforts in developing culturally responsive care by maintaining initiatives that ensure physicians are prepared to meet the clinical, cultural, and linguistic needs of patients, and who are also aware of the varying epidemiologic incidence of disease among different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. This year’s awardees have demonstrated a commitment to diversity through community service, clinical volunteering, or research.
The mentoring scholarship recipients are a diverse group. Nearly all have roots in Southern California and most are attending local medical schools.
Awardee Patricia Nwajuaku, a native of Los Angeles, is an example. She is in her third year of a joint program at the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science and the UCLA School of Medicine.
As an undergraduate at UC Riverside, Patricia co-founded an organization called African Americans United in Science, which aimed to promote the success of minorities in the sciences. The experience fostered her interest in health care, and she went on to earn a master’s in public health degree from Columbia University. At Columbia, Patricia served as co-president of the School of Public Health’s Black and Latino Student Caucus. Her interests go beyond the local, and Patricia has traveled to Nigeria and Haiti to study the complexities of health care delivery in developing countries.
Here at home, she has volunteered for three years with the Synergy Family Health Fair, which aims to bring primary health care and screenings to underserved areas of Los Angeles. Patricia, who grew up uninsured, has a dream. Patricia dreams “of practicing in inner-city Los Angeles, specifically in and around the area where I was raised. This will undoubtedly give me with the opportunity to serve diverse populations within this underserved community.”
Download brief profiles of the 12 Kaiser Permanente Oliver Goldsmith, MD, Scholarship program awardees.
About Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation’s leading integrated health plans. Founded in 1945, it is a nonprofit, group practice prepayment program with Southern California headquarters in Pasadena, California. Kaiser Permanente serves the health care needs of 3.3 million members in Southern California. Today, it encompasses the nonprofit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and their subsidiaries, and the for-profit Southern California Permanente Medical Group. Kaiser Permanente's Southern California Region includes more than 55,800 technical, administrative and clerical employees and caregivers, and more than 6,400 physicians representing all specialties. More information about Kaiser Permanente can be found at kp.org.
