Clinical research is a key component of academic medicine, but it can be challenging for early-career physicians to find the time and resources to conduct that work. A new program at the UC Riverside School of Medicine, funded by a $550,000 grant from the University of California Office of the President’s Advancing Faculty Diversity (AFD) program, is looking to change that.
The “Transformative Hiring for Representation, InclusiVity, and Excellence” (THRIVE) Program is providing five early-career UCR Health clinical faculty with 10% protected time to devote to their health equity, clinical education, and community outreach research projects as well as access to experienced research mentors across the School of Medicine.
Now in the second of its planned three-year duration, THRIVE was the brainchild of Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Biomedical Sciences Iryna Ethell, PhD, and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Professor of Medicine Denise Martinez, MD.
“We have challenges like any other medical school,” Ethell said. “We are good at finding excellent faculty and recruiting them, but how to retain them? How do you hire faculty whose goals and interests match our mission? One way to do it is to target it. Finding faculty with an interest in health disparities, with health inequities. Goals that match our mission to serve underserved areas.”
“Programs like THRIVE are essential if we want to move from intention to impact in health equity,” Martinez said. “Supporting faculty who are committed to addressing disparities ensures that our research, teaching, and clinical care are aligned with the needs of our diverse communities.”
It was the commitment to clinical and research efforts in these areas that appealed to Mahsa Khayat-Khoei, MD, MBA.
“I was looking for a position that would support both clinical and research efforts,” said Khayat-Khoei, who completed her fellowship in neuroimmunology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. “I chose UC Riverside over several other academic and clinical focused programs because of the diversity of the patient population in the Inland Empire and the emphasis on diversity in research and clinical care through the THRIVE program.”
The team concept serves the background of the SOM’s THRIVE program. In addition to working together at UCR Health facilities, the scholars and their mentors have regular meetings, including monthly dinners at faculty members' homes. All aspects of the program are designed to help them develop their research, find new grants, publish their work, and grow into higher clinical faculty positions.
Kathy Calderon, MD, a THRIVE Scholar who graduated from the UCR School of Medicine, praised the regular THRIVE scholar meetings.
“These meetings allow us to come together to break bread, discuss our work in health equity, and learn from and encourage one another in trying to make the world a better place,” she said.
“They work with Dr. Porche to learn how to write a successful grant proposal, how to write a paper, how to pose research questions, how to determine goals and outcomes,” Ethell said. “There is a science to it, but as a physician you are trained to see patients, not to write grants and papers. So to have that support helps. You are part of a larger group of people with the same goals and you feel like you belong.”
THRIVE was inspired, in part, by a large, campus-wide cluster hire program conducted at UCR a few years ago that Ethell participated in as chair of the neuroscience cluster hire. That program brought together faculty from different disciplines and schools but who had common research interests.
“They were across several different colleges, but they stayed in touch and worked together,” said Ethell. “We didn’t facilitate that interaction - they did it themselves. They were assistant professors and now they are associate professors. They have grants, and they are collaborating on projects. So it does work. They are a team now.”
The five THRIVE scholars come from a variety of backgrounds and bring a wide range of experiences to the cohort. While one is a UCR SOM graduate, the others come from across the country.
“It’s great that they aren’t all from around here. They bring a variety of experiences and cultural diversity,” Ethell said.
Teaching clinicians who have spent most of their professional careers learning how to treat patients to become researchers can be challenging, especially when trying to balance the multiple roles. Fortunately, the THRIVE Program has an expert mentor who can help them along the way in Michelle Porche, EdD. A professor in residence in the Department of Internal Medicine and director of clinical faculty research development and scholarly activity, Porche has extensive experience providing support to early career faculty and postdoctoral fellows and also oversees the Clinical Faculty Research Development Series for clinicians with an interest in growing their research experience or exploring new research questions.
“The challenge here at SOM is helping the THRIVE scholars navigate limited research time in the context of their significant clinical and teaching responsibilities,” Porche said. “I strive to work with early career researchers to build research skills, confidence, persistence, and the ability to integrate feedback and not get discouraged.”
Ethell said that she hopes that the UC will provide additional support in the future, or that UCR SOM will be able to support it locally.
“Two years is a short period of time and developing a program like this doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time,” Ethell said. “We want to be able to show results and, if UC can’t support it going forward, I hope we can support it locally, hopefully with a new cohort. It’s a great investment for the future.”
Meet the THRIVE Scholars
Kevin Gutierrez, MD, MS
HS Assistant Clinical Professor, Psychiatry/Neuroscience
Kevin Gutierrez, MD, MS, is doing research into “social movement psychiatry,” which includes the feasibility and acceptability of embedding psychiatrists into community organizations. This can include doing group psychotherapy with community organizers to prevent burnout and examining the outcomes of continual group psychotherapy with these organizers.
Gutierrez completed his residency in psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where he also led initiatives focusing on race, identity, and mental health equity. He sees patients at the UCR Health Citrus Tower facility.
Kathy Calderon, MD
HS Assistant Clinical Professor, Family Medicine
For Kathy Calderon, MD, joining UCR Health and becoming a THRIVE Scholar was a homecoming. Born and raised in Riverside, she was a member of the UCR School of Medicine’s Class of 2021 before completing her family medicine residency at UCLA.
“I wanted to come back home,” she said. “It has been a blessing to work alongside my colleagues, many of whom were my attendings when I was a medical student. The THRIVE program appealed to me because I want to grow in my career in academics and mentorship, and do work in health equity and education, in hopes of addressing and correcting health disparities in medicine.”
Calderon is partnering with THRIVE scholar Blanca Campos, MD, on improving resident education, especially for residents who are graduates of international medical programs. Working with members of the SOM’s Family Medicine Residency program, they have developed and presented simulated patient cases to assess and enhance resident physicians' clinical reasoning and presentation skills.
“Through these structured case-based learning sessions, residents are able to formulate and present their own assessments and plans, in addition to developing Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP) note proficiency, effective clinical communication, and advanced diagnostic and management strategies to ensure that patient plans are of evidence-based medicine,” Calderon said.
Blanca Campos, MD
HS Clinical Assistant Professor, Family Medicine
Blanca Campos, MD, came to the UCR SOM Department of Family Medicine as a core faculty member for the residency program in April 2025. While she was drawn by the opportunity to work in the new residency program, her colleagues recommended that she also apply to the THRIVE Program.
“It would give me the opportunity to learn from expert mentors about how to teach students and residents and conduct research,” Campos said. “As a clinician, research is a new field that I am interested in learning about.
Campos said that she is enjoying the program.
“I have great mentors and leaders who are guiding me through this process,” she said, specifically citing Porche and Martinez, as well as her research partner, Kathy Calderon.
Calderon, in turn, praised Campos, who was her attending physician at UCLA as Calderon completed the residency in family medicine and who she now works side-by-side at the UCR Heath Citrus Tower facility. “She continues to be a mentor to me, but also a friend,” Calderon said.
“I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to be part of this wonderful and innovative program,” Campos added. “I look forward to continuing to learn and, hopefully, Dr. Calderon and I can get to publish our work at some point in the near future.”
Mahsa Khayat-Khoei, MD, MBA
HS Assistant Clinical Professor, Psychiatry/Neuroscience
Since completing her fellowship in neuroimmunology and multiple sclerosis at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Multiple Sclerosis Center, Mahsa Khayat-Khoei, MD, MBA, has been continuing her research in innate immunity and the role of monocytes in the pathology and progression of multiple sclerosis (MS).
As a specialist in MS, she isn’t just treating patients who come to see her at UCR Health’s Citrus Tower clinic, but is also collecting data that might help find better treatments and, potentially, a cure.
“I am hoping to create a more diverse bio repository from MS patients who I see in the Inland Empire, including patients from different ethnic groups,” she said. “These samples can be used for multiple collaborative research projects to expand my research on progressive MS pathology.”
Khayat-Khoei meets once a month with her primary mentor, Monica Carson, PhD, professor and chair of the Division of Biomedical Sciences as well as several times with Porche for professional guidance. She also spends time with her THRIVE colleagues during their days at the UCR Health clinics.
Edward Troncoso, MD
HS Assistant Clinical Professor, Internal Medicine
Edward Troncoso, MD, is developing a hypertension screening initiative at the Coachella Valley free clinic that is intended to intervene with high-risk patients through lifestyle and pharmacologic interventions.
“The best part of THRIVE has been getting to meet the other scholars and share ideas on how to improve the health of the Riverside community,” he said.
Troncoso joined UCR Health after completing his internal medicine residency at NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn, NY.
