California Medicine Scholars Program is key to closing a 4,000-physician primary care gap by 2030

Growing up in southwest Virginia, Katherine Browder, assistant dean of Strategic Initiatives and chief of staff of the UCR School of Medicine, frequently saw friends and neighbors who were unable to access quality medical care for their families. The experience awakened her strong sense of fairness. “Anything I can do to level that playing field to help build more fairness is important,” she said.

UC Riverside medical student Jonathan Ogbogu, class of 2028, has received a $10,000 scholarship from the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC), a Washington, DC-based organization that leads initiatives to close gaps in cardiovascular outcomes through advocacy, education, research, and mentorship.

At the 2025 National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA) conference in June, a man from the audience congratulated UC Riverside School of Medicine student Joslyn Santana and her mother after Santana received an award. “He said, ‘When I see your daughter go up there, I can see my daughter,’” Santana recalled. “It’s a reminder that representation is so important, because you never know what younger generations are watching and are able to see themselves in a different way because of you.”

UC Riverside-led mouse study finds microplastics affect male and female offspring differently

UC Riverside’s Dr. Lisa Fortuna is an editor of the journal’s special issue

As a medical student, Mahsa Khayat-Khoei, MD, found neurology complex and interesting, but also somewhat intimidating. “You get to study neurons and different diseases that affect different areas of the brain, but there was no treatment, which was disappointing,” recalled Khayat-Khoei, now a fellowship-trained neuroimmunologist at UCR Health.

Discovery points to new “upstream” drug targets for preventing atherosclerosis