Kaiser grant for recruiting Latino doctors
UPI, May 5, 2009
LOS ANGELES, May 5 (UPI) -- Kaiser Permanente announced Tuesday it had made a $2 million grant to a UCLA program that recruits foreign-trained doctors to work in U.S. Latino neighborhoods.
Kaiser said the program is aimed at Latin American medical school graduates and will assist them with passing their U.S. licensing exams in return for working in family medicine residency programs in California.
The goal is to increase the number of doctors serving the large and currently underserved Spanish-speaking community in California.
Dr. Patrick Dowling, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at UCLA, said there were about 2,500 physicians who were trained in Latin America and currently reside legally in California. These doctors, however, are not licensed to practice medicine in the United States.
"We predict California will face a physician shortage of up to 17,000 by 2015 and this shortage disproportionately affects underserved communities," Dowling said in a written statement. "UCLA and its International Medical Graduate Program is committed to helping these skilled individuals navigate the road to licensure."
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