Content Authored by: Erika Klein
Open House 2024 Welcomes Community to the SOM
On Saturday, the UC Riverside School of Medicine hosted Open House 2024, an annual event that helps attendees learn more about the school and the path to entering the health professions. More than 600 people attended the event, including prospective students, medical school applicants, high school students, and their families...
The Long Road to Health Equity for All
In high school, Mario Sims, PhD, read a book that would have a profound impact on his life and career: The Philadelphia Negro, by W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois, a sociologist and civil rights activist in the early 1900s, linked social conditions, environment, segregation, and other factors to...
SOM Hosts Event Honoring the J.W. Vines Medical Society
On Monday, the UCR School of Medicine hosted an event to recognize the J.W. Vines Medical Society’s efforts to increase diversity among medical students as well as the organization's influence on the SOM and its community-based mission. Watch a recording of the event See a gallery of photos from the...
Providing Healthcare to the Unhoused Community
Everything in your life may be going well, but sometimes, it can still all fall apart. One patient with eye pain recently visited the UCR Health Community Clinic , a clinic intended to serve the local unhoused population. During the appointment, he shared his experience with Moazzum Bajwa, MD, MPH...
UCR SOM Celebrates Match Day 2024
On Friday, the UCR SOM class of 2024 learned where they will spend the next few years of their medical career during Match Day. The annual event brings together fourth-year medical students and their families to celebrate their next steps toward becoming doctors. At 9 am exactly, students across the...
Healthy Pregnancies for All
Recently, Brenda Ross, MD, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at UCR Health, suggested that a patient with underlying health conditions have her pregnancy managed at a larger hospital with more in-house specialists. When the patient refused, Ross agreed to work with her. Ross recalled the patient being consistent with her...
Setting Kids and Future Physicians Up for Success
As a child in Botswana, Esther Caroline McGowan, MD, still remembers the love that her mother, a nurse, had for her patients. “That was one of the reasons that I wanted to get into medicine,” recalled McGowan, who is now a pediatrician at UCR Health. “In my mind, everyone deserved...
Training Community Physicians while Conducting Community Research
Many parents teared up at the UCR School of Medicine’s second White Coat Ceremony in 2014, but one in particular stood out to Meera Nair, PhD, an associate professor of biomedical sciences. Her first lab technician, Josiah Chung, MD, had come to work with her to gain more experience before...
A True Mentor at the UCR SOM
At a neurology conference a few years ago, Iryna Ethell, PhD, the associate dean of academic affairs and a professor of biomedical sciences at the UCR Riverside School of Medicine, noticed that children with autism would sit quietly for hours, scream suddenly, then sit quietly again. When she asked the...
The SOM Team that Does it All
Recently, someone pulled aside Cynthia Carolina, the UCR School of Medicine’s director of facilities and operations, to let her know that cars weren’t stopping at a stop sign in the parking lot. “At first I was thinking, that's totally not me,” Carolina recalled, laughing. “But then I started thinking, you...
From Fatigues to Scrubs
For Jason Hasegawa, class of 2025, being the first on the scene of a medical crisis or inserting an emergency chest tube was just another day in his roles as a first responder and, later, an army medic. Completing his first UC Davis undergraduate course, algebra 1, however, terrified him...
Filling (Almost) Every Role at the SOM
Shortly after the founding of the UCR School of Medicine, it was time for an inventory audit—but the newly hired staff member in charge of that process realized she didn’t know who was assigned to do it. “She was in panic mode, and she reached out to me because my...
Training Psychiatrists while Supporting Students’ Mental Health
Hearing several of her patients make plans for their commencement ceremony as part of their UC Riverside undergraduate class this year, Toshia Yamaguchi, MD, a psychiatrist at UCR Health, felt a strong sense of pride. “I’m so incredibly impressed by them, and by how much they persisted,” she recalled. Yamaguchi’s...
SOM Celebrates Grand Opening of Education II Building with Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
The UC Riverside School of Medicine celebrated the grand opening of the new School of Medicine Education Building II with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday, September 26, 2023. More than 300 guests attended event, which was held in conjunction with the year-long celebration of the school's tenth anniversary. See...
Celebration of Women in Medicine and Science 2023
The School of Medicine hosted the 2023 Celebration of Women in Medicine and Science on September 12 with Shirley Malcom, PhD, the senior advisor and director of SEA Change at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), delivering the keynote address. It was the first event held in...
Serving the Community through UCR Health
Growing up as a lifeguard in Long Beach, Timothy J. Collins, EdD, MHA, FACHE, EMT, always wondered what happened to people after he rescued them from the water. This curiosity led to his lifelong medical career, including serving as an emergency medical technician and other roles that focused on improving...
White Coat Ceremony Welcomes the Class of 2027
This year’s White Coat Ceremony saw 86 medical students and four biomedical sciences students at the UC Riverside School of Medicine receive their white coats, symbolizing their entry into the medical profession. The 2023 event was held Friday, August 4 at the Student Recreation Center on the UC Riverside campus...