S3Ep2: Intergenerational Social Justice Activism in Medicine with Dr. Alicia Fernández

Woke WOC Docs

We are wishing everyone lots of love during this time. If you're in the Bay Area, the Freedom Community Clinic created a community mass resource sheet with up-to-date health information on COVID-19 at tinyurl.com/bayareacovid19help. We have the enormous privilege and excitement to talk with Dr. Alicia Fernández, a professor of Medicine, general internist at San Francisco General Hospital and the Director of UCSF Latinx Center for Excellence. In addition, Alicia does research on increasing language concordance between patients and physicians to improve patient care and health outcomes among many other topics. In this episode, we talk with Alicia more about her journey into and through medicine, including her immigration journey from Argentina to the United States at age 15, transitioning from political activism to health justice in the heart of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, to where she is now-- a clinician, professor, mentor, and advocate for underrepresented and marginalized communities. All three of us have been incredibly grateful to Alicia for creating amazing programs for minority students here at UCSF (PROF-PATH and ALAS) that help us navigate academic medicine in ways that expand knowledge and mentorship on how to succeed and more fully show up as our true, authentic selves. Bio: Alicia Fernández, MD is a Professor of Medicine at UCSF in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Dr. Fernández has expertise in health and health care disparities, with a strong focus on diabetes, Latinx health, immigrant health, and language barriers. In addition to being the Director of the LCOE, she is also the co-director of two LCOE programs: FUEGO and PROF-PATH. She also serves as a faculty mentor for the UCSF ALAS program.