Extending medical education to a broader segment of tomorrow's physicians and researchers, the UCLA School of Medicine has established two innovative programs - the UC Riverside/UCLA Biomedical Sciences Program and the Drew/UCLA Medical Education Program

The UCR/UCLA Thomas Haider Program in Biomedical Sciences at the University of California, Riverside was revised in 2003 to reflect its new mission of "training physicians for distinguished medical careers of service to the underserved, inland, and rural populations consistent with needs of the State of California." Beginning in fall of 2005, the students matriculating to the joint UCR/UCLA Biomedical Sciences MD Program will be from the UCR undergraduate student body who have at the time of matriculation a minimum of 6 continuous quarters of full-time enrollment at UCR and who meet all of the same requirements as for the UCLA program. Until that time, students applicable for admissions to the program will be drawn from among those who entered the Biomedical Sciences Program as freshmen at UCR. Under both the current and the new program, students complete the first two years of medical school at UC Riverside and then participate in the clinical training program at UCLA.

The Drew/UCLA program was established in 1978 between the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in south central Los Angeles and the UCLA School of Medicine. Its mission is to train students to practice medicine with competence and compassion in disadvantaged rural and urban communities. Medical students in the program take their first two years of basic medical science coursework at UCLA, then complete their last two years of clinical work at the King/Drew Medical Center on the Drew campus. Twenty-four students per year are admitted to the program.

This page was last updated on August 14, 2003 by Christina Yoon (CYoon@mednet.ucla.edu).