L.A. Care Health Plan honors physician students who want to serve their community with scholarships

Last month, L.A. Care Health Plan, announced its seventh cohort of Elevating the Safety Net medical school scholarship awardees at a special “white coat” ceremony.

Eight students from underrepresented communities have each received a full medical scholarship worth nearly $428,000, allowing them to graduate without medical school debt. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, 75% of medical students leave school with education debt of $196,000. The scholarships that are provided by the Elevating the Safety Net program eliminate the huge debt that can require many physicians to choose higher-paying specialties or to serve in more affluent communities.  

Elevating the Safety Net is a $205 million initiative, which launched in 2018 by John Baackes, CEO of L.A. Care Health Plan, to explore ways to help fund Medi-Cal while expanding access to care for the working poor. 

It was also created to address a physician shortage across the country, a shortage projected to be 86,000 by 2036. The initiative is not only working to increase the number of physicians working in the health care safety net, but it is also striving to increase diversity among the physician workforce in L.A. County. Research shows racial and ethnic diversity in the physician workforce improves outcomes in communities of color.

Cynthia Carmona, former director of the Safety Net Initiative, said that these programs help address the shortage of doctors. “As we expand medical coverage in California, we want to make sure we have doctors and programs that can support all the new patients that are going to need care,” Carmona said. “It doesn’t help to make people eligible for Medi-Cal if we do not have a physician or doctor for them to see. The more doctors that we can bring into the workforce, the better chance people have of not just finding any doctor but to get that care in a manner that makes sense for the patient.”

Now in its seventh year, in 2024 the program awarded scholarships to Sergio Vazquez, Lewis William, Estrella Ramirez, Monica Valle, Brenda Vazquez, Anthony Jones and Kennedi Randolph.

Sergio Vazquez, scholarship recipient from South Los Angeles, said that one of the reasons he went into medicine was to help his own family overcome barriers like language, time, cost and transportation. He also said that witnessing health inequities in the inner city profoundly shaped his aspiration to become a physician and social justice leader. 

As a first generation student, Vazquez was extremely emotional to hear the good news about his scholarship from Elevating the Safety Net. Sergio balanced multiple jobs with a rigorous pre-med curriculum at Dartmouth College where he majored in Sociology. “Finances have always been a sensitive topic in my family,” said Vasquez. “I worked at McDonald’s through high school and part of my college. So hearing that I had received this scholarship was nothing but life changing.” He also said that it took a few days to process the magnitude of the news.

Vazquez has conducted published research on intravenous drug use, and he has clinical experience at Cedars Sinai, L.A. County General Medical Center and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Since graduating in 2022, Sergio has worked at the South Central Family Health Center. As a physician, he wants to help dismantle the systemic barriers that perpetuate health disparities.

Two years ago, the American Medical Association (AMA) stated that there was a shortage of representative, diverse physicians. Projections from AMA anticipate a massive shortage of physicians in the U.S. within 12 years. As of now, Latinos make up only 5.8% of the physician workforce. Black people only make up 5% of the physician workforce and Native Americans or Alaska Natives make up 0.3% of physicians. 

According to an analysis published by Penn Medicine researchers found that “patient-provider race concordance led to higher odds of receiving the maximum patient experience score.” Which means that patients with similar racial or ethnic backgrounds to their physicians perform better when it comes to their health.

For Vazquez it's really important to represent the Latino community so his advice for other students who are interested in the field is to let them know that they are completely capable of doing it. “The community needs you. Maybe you're like me and didn’t grow up seeing people that look like us in white coats but I just want to also let you know to keep fighting because unfortunately this is a long journey,” he said.

Estrella Ramirez is another of the 2024 L.A. Care scholarship recipients who is from Los Angeles. She was born and raised by her single Mexican mother who worked two jobs to keep a roof over the family’s head. Ramirez's family was very happy to hear that she had received a full ride to medical school. “My mom was very grateful. My mom always supported me through my journey and I felt like after so many years it finally came true and she was happy to see me happy in that kind of sense,” Ramirez said.

A new national survey finds that nearly two-thirds of physicians still owe money from medical school and of those doctors, 32% had more than $250,000 in debt remaining, according to Fierce HealthCare.

Ramirez believes that programs like Elevating the Safety Net are really important because she grew up noticing that there weren't too many Latino physicians in her area, even though she lives in a population where more than the population is Hispanic or Latino. “I want to change that and contribute back to my community by being a doctor for others in my area,” Ramirez said.

Not only does Ramirez not see enough Latino physicians in her community, she also thinks it's time to educate the community on better eating habits. “There’s not enough physicians or educational programs. Another prominent barrier that I see in medicine is that we're not letting our community know healthier alternatives.,” she said. Her goal as a physician is to improve health outcomes in underserved South L.A. communities by providing culturally competent care.

A major challenge Ramirez faced during her medical journey was feeling isolated. “I felt like I was the only one kind of pursuing this in my classes because I was the only one having to work and go to school at the same time,” she said. Ramirez was working as a pharmacy technician at Rancho Los Amigos Physical Rehabilitation Center where she developed an interest in medicine and decided to continue her education. She worked to support herself while attending Cerritos Community College and later California State University, Long Beach, where she received her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry in 2020.

Another major challenge she faced was looking for resources that she didn’t know existed or were an option for her. “I feel like I got most of my resources online, but it was still very isolating because I couldn't just talk to, you know, a classmate about it. And I feel like with the new Charles Drew program, they're very focused on underserved communities and having students from the same area kind of be accepted to this program so that there's more availability and more mentorship. And I really feel like I wish I could have had that before, but I'm hoping that this program opens the doors for many others like me,” Ramirez said.

“The cost of attendance for the four years is about $400,000 and I was planning on taking out all the loans possible because I want to give back to my community and I don't even mind being in so much debt because it's not really about me," said Ramirez. "It's about what I'm going to be providing. I just feel so grateful that I was given the opportunity with this scholarship from L.A. Care.”