California’s San Joaquin Valley, a roughly 250-mile stretch from Stockton to Bakersfield with 4.3 million residents, has far fewer doctors than the rest of the state and no standalone medical school granting a doctorate of medicine.
The region has about 200 physicians per 10,000 residents, according to the California Healthcare Foundation; in the Bay Area the ratio is more than twice as high.
Both the state Legislature and the University of California have publicly said they intend to create a standalone medical school at UC Merced, which opened in 2005, but it could take more than a decade before it enrolls students. UC Riverside took about 40 years to open its medical school.
Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a Bakersfield Democrat and practicing physician, has tried repeatedly, and largely failed, to compel the UC system to explore a medical school in Kern County.
For now, the only medical school in the eight-county region is California Health Sciences University, a private for-profit institution in Clovis that offers a doctorate in osteopathic medicine, a less traditional degree.
UC San Francisco has expanded training in the region in recent years, with some medical students completing part of their education at its Fresno campus, which also runs a growing residency program.