Scholarships

Join Us in Supporting Tomorrow’s Physician Leaders Who Will Serve Our Community

UCSF is committed to improving health and access to quality health care in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV). As a regional campus of the UCSF School of Medicine, UCSF Fresno recruits and trains future physicians to address the unique health needs of the region’s diverse and underserved populations through the UCSF San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education (SJV PRIME). With strong connections to the Valley, SJV PRIME students call the region home and have demonstrated a commitment to serving local communities. Students spend the first 18 months at the UCSF campus in San Francisco, then move to Fresno for the remaining two and a half years of their medical education at UCSF Fresno.

SJV PRIME student Neytali Kanwar (Class of 2026) is a daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up in west Fresno attending Central High School East before graduating from Fresno State.

“SJV PRIME provides me with the tools and education to help alleviate health disparities people face in the Valley, and also allows me to train in my hometown and my community that I hope to one day serve,” said Kanwar. “As a first-generation student with limited resources available to me, I was often concerned about how I would afford medical school. Scholarship support helps me focus on my studies free from those worries.”

Most students who aspire to become physicians through SJV PRIME lack the financial means to do so. For those students currently in SJV PRIME, 100% have some sort of scholarship support and 66% have loan indebtedness. The average loan indebtedness for these students at graduation is projected to be $105,000. Additional support is needed to be able to fully fund the cost of attendance for all SJV PRIME students.

Your support helps ensure that the highest-quality medical education remains accessible to the most exceptional Valley students who come from and understand the communities they will one day serve. To learn more about how your gift to UCSF Fresno can help us continue the important work of educating the next generation of physicians for the Valley, contact Kathleen Smith, assistant director of development, [email protected] or (559) 499-6426.