California is betting on its community colleges to solve a looming doctor shortage, and two new Los Angeles institutions just signed on to lead the charge. The California Medicine Scholars Program announced it is expanding into Los Angeles with two regional hubs, one led by UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and the other by Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, while also launching a third new hub in the Bay Area.
The program, which connects California's community colleges, four-year universities, medical schools, community health centers, and community-based organizations, was established in 2022, according to MyNewsLA.com. It was built using a $10.5 million state budget allocation administered through the Department of Healthcare Access and Information, with a central coordinating office at the Foundation for California Community Colleges. The initiative traces back to recommendations from the California Future Health Workforce Commission, which called for building direct pathways from community colleges into medical school.
What began in 2022 has grown fast. Participation tripled to more than 600 scholars across 31 counties by early this year, and the program celebrated its first scholar matriculating into medical school, per the Foundation for California Community Colleges. With the new expansion, the program will serve 56 California community colleges, 23 four-year universities and medical schools, and 42 community-based health organizations across seven regional hubs total, up from the four hubs — led by UC Riverside, UC Davis, UC San Diego, and UCSF Fresno — that existed before this wave of growth. The program currently serves approximately 800 students statewide.
South LA's Drew University Brings Historic Mission to New Role
Charles R. Drew University, incorporated in 1966 in the aftermath of the Watts Uprising, is one of only four Historically Black Medical Colleges in the nation and the only federally designated Historically Black learning institution west of Texas, according to UCLA CTSI. Keosha Partlow, vice provost of student affairs at Charles R. Drew University and interim associate dean of student affairs for its college of medicine, said the university was founded to improve access to healthcare and education in South Los Angeles. Partlow said the California Medicine Scholars Program aligns with that founding mission and gives students from Drew's own communities a supported pathway to becoming needed physicians.
The timing lines up with a period of rapid growth for the university. Charles R. Drew opened a new four-story, 60,000-square-foot Health Professions Education Building on its Willowbrook campus in July, expanding its independent four-year M.D. program enrollment to approximately 240 students, per LACMA. That standalone M.D. degree followed decades of Drew running a joint training program with UCLA. The state legislature separately approved a direct $5 million budget allocation for Drew in July to support health professions education, a proposal advocated for by the California Legislative Black Caucus, the same report notes.
Hoodline previously covered a nearby magnet school that trains future doctors in the same South LA neighborhood surrounding Drew University, underscoring how the region's health education infrastructure stretches from high school through medical school.
UCLA's Role Comes Amid Federal Admissions Scrutiny
At UCLA, associate dean Jennifer Lucero said the medical school is helping build a physician workforce that trains, practices, and remains in California communities that need it most. Regional hubs like UCLA's provide academic advising, mentorship, clinical exposure, internships, volunteer opportunities, and other medical-school preparation experiences to scholars working toward that goal.
UCLA's expanded role arrives alongside separate federal scrutiny of its medical school's admissions practices. In May, the U.S. Department of Justice issued findings alleging that UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine illegally allowed race to influence admissions decisions, opening a federal civil rights review, as Hoodline reported in May. The dossier does not indicate any resolution of that review, and it remains a separate matter from the community college pipeline program UCLA is now co-leading.
A Statewide Push Rooted in Physician Shortages
The expansion is a direct response to a widening gap in primary care access. Officials said more than two-thirds of California counties experience low physician supply and high rates of preventable hospitalizations, and the new hubs are part of a broader effort to address projected primary-care physician shortages statewide. Separately, public health indicators from Let's Get Healthy California project the state will face a deficit of 10,500 primary care providers by 2030, with California ranking 32nd nationwide in primary care residency positions relative to its population.
The shortage lands hardest on communities the new hubs are meant to serve. In the Inland Empire, where an existing hub led by UC Riverside School of Medicine partners with nine regional community colleges including Chaffey College, Riverside City College, and College of the Desert, the region suffers from about 40 primary care doctors per 100,000 residents. The program's underlying diversity goals are shaped by a stark disparity documented by the California Health Care Foundation: only about 6% of licensed physicians in California are Latinx, despite Latinos making up roughly 39% of the state's population, with underrepresentation most pronounced in primary care specialties in low-income communities.
Rounding out the expansion, Chabot College in Hayward has been selected as the sole community college to lead the program's new Bay Area hub, giving Northern California its own foothold in the pipeline alongside the two Los Angeles hubs. Demand for primary care physicians is expected to keep increasing in the coming years, and the program's organizers are positioning the community-college-to-medical-school model, built on academic advising, mentorship, and early clinical exposure, as the state's long-term answer.
