Our Commitment to Inclusive Excellence

UCLA Primary Care Residents at Chicano Park in San Diego

Our PGY3s during an Immigration & Border Health trip to San Diego, where residents volunteered with Border Angels, appreciated art & history in Chicano Park, and learned about the US immigration landscape at the Museum of Us.

As you explore our primary care program website, you will see that Inclusive Excellence is a central thread throughout our curriculum both in the clinic and in didactic and community sessions. Putting this learning into practice, our residents are heavily involved in advocating for our patients and the communities we serve. As you read through our site, you’ll see this in the spirit and practice of our residents. Here is some of our residents' recent work we are proud to highlight!

Primary care residents are key leaders in campus-wide advocacy groups.

Alix Masters (Class of 2026), Current Co-President of IM REACH
Nina Escueta (Class of 2026) & Deborah Yip (Class of 2026), Current IM REACH Curriculum Co-Chairs
Kelly Cheung (Class of 2025), Past Co-President of IM REACH
Daniel Gonzales (Class of 2024), Past Co-President of IM REACH
- The Internal Medicine Residents Engaged in Advocacy, Community, and Healing (IM REACH) is a group of residents, faculty, and staff that aims to advance extraordinary patient-centered health outcomes for all patients by offering curricular innovation for residency training; developing physician leaders that respect and embrace the communities we serve; advance mentorship within our field; and support outreach into communities across the greater Los Angeles area. In addition to the residents above, many of our primary care residents have served on the IM REACH board. The IM REACH faculty advisor, Liz Asfaw, is a graduate of our Primary Care Residency Program.
Diana Lopez (Class of 2024), Past Co-Chair of MHO
- The UCLA Minority Housestaff Organization is comprised of members dedicated to the mission of inclusive excellence. The organization aims to develop and advance physicians who reflect the rich cultures seen in patient populations and who advocate for the needs of all those communities whom they serve.
Vi Nguyen & Nathan Mclaughlin (Class of 2025), Past Co-Chairs of Spectrum Alliance
Phillip Chen (Class of 2023), Past Co-Chair of Spectrum Alliance
- Many of our primary care residents are a part of this expanding multi-specialty LGBTQIA+ affinity group. Spectrum is a resident-led initiative, supported by the Residents Engaged in the Advocacy, Community, and Healing Committee. Spectrum advocates for LGBTQIA+ health and enriches our residency curriculum with LGBTQIA+ health topics.

Deborah Yip Presenting a Research Poster

Primary care residents participate in scholarly projects focused on addressing health for populations with higher rates of disease burden or risk.

Nikko Gonzales (Class of 2023): Assessing perceptions and understanding of colon cancer screening among persons experiencing housing insecurity in Los Angeles County. The project aims to assess the perceptions of colon cancer screening among individuals who are accessing medical care in non-traditional, community-based clinic spaces in Los Angeles County. MHO Grant Recipient 2021-2022.
Daniel Gonzales, Daniel Stokes, Kevin Truong (Class of 2024): Frontline perspectives on ambulatory clinical access challenges for patients insured with California Medicaid. In collaboration with National Clinical Scholars Program Fellows, conducted qualitative interviews and thematic analyses with clinicians and administrative staff highlighting challenges with delays in patient care relating to restrictive policies or administrative issues by Medicaid at inpatient discharge and outpatient clinic visits. MHO Grant Recipient 2021-2022

Nathan McLaughlin Presenting a Research Poster

Kelly Cheung, Josh Jiang (Class of 2025): Improving treatment of obesity and utilization at Olive View. Primary Care QI Project 2022-2023.
Kelly Cheung (Class of 2025): Empowering primary care resident physicians to address SDoH through community medicine visits & EMR tools (dot phrases, patient instructions). Primary Care QI Project 2022-2023.
VA-HPACT/SM Class of 2025: Improving Naloxone Access Among Veterans Experiencing Homelessness quality improvement project.

Spotlight: Dr. Lovelee Brown

Dr. Brown is a primary care physician at the Venice Family Clinic, a local FQHC in Los Angeles, and proud graduate of the UCLA Primary Care track. As a graduate of the inaugural Olive View-Santa Clarita class and former primary care chief resident, she translated her passion for serving in the safety net to her current clinical practice and academically as the assistant Designated Institutional Office for Inclusive Excellence for UCLA's office of Graduate Medical Education. Through her work within the Graduate Medical Education space, she helps to promote high-quality health for all patients, representation within our physician community, and inclusion of thought and background that is rigorous and non-exclusionary in our learning space to train the next generation of physician advocates and leaders. She has led several recruitment initiatives including the Road to Residency conference at UCLA, Pathways to Practice (a career development conference), and founded the UCLA MHO to develop and enrich resident training.

Our primary care faculty and alumni are leaders in JEDI.

Dr. Arash Nafisi and Dr. Sural Shah: Leads of Olive-View’s Human Rights Clinic
Dr. Brianna Cowan: Medical Director for the WLA VA Homeless Patient Aligned Care Team clinic
Dr. Hijab Zubairi: Health Equity & Advocacy Pathway Director
Dr. Lovelee Brown: Designated Institutional Official (DIO) Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education, MHO founder
Dr. Elizabeth Asfaw: IM REACH Faculty Advisor
Dr. Katherine Chen: Health Services Researcher focused on improving health through housing policy and built environment.

UCLA is a leader in Health Services Research.

Many of our Health Services Research faculty live out their activism through their work in health equity. Our research and clinical faculty are intentionally paired with residents by area of interest and serve as mentors throughout residency. Our clinical faculty also love working with our housestaff and are always available to provide formal and informal mentoring throughout. We equip our residents to interface with health systems and health policy through the capstone Primary Care Medicine block focused on advocacy. This close tie between mentorship, scholarship, and advocacy provides our residents with unique tools to be future physician leaders and advocates for their patients.