Diversity Gap Grows in UC Med Schools, Says Report

Juan Jose Guerra is now an obstetrician and gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif. But when he was going to medical school in the 1980s, he got little encouragement to do so.

I battled through college, I did not have the highest grade point average. On one occasion I was told not to go to medical school by my pre-med advisers, he says, adding: I would not be here if I listened to them.

Guerra wanted to be a doctor not because of an interest in science but because he wanted there to be more Spanish-speaking physicians. As a seven-year-old, he accompanied his grandfather, an alcoholic with a host of medical problems, to the doctor where he had to serve as an interpreter.

Now a new report by the Greenlining Institute looking at whos going to medical school in the University of California system suggests that future generations of Californians will be facing the same kind of problems Guerra faced as a boy. The doctors of tomorrow dont match up to the diversity of the state today.

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