Biographies

2010 Champions of Health Professions Diversity Award Honorees

Sandra P. Daley, MD

For more than three decades, Dr. Sandra P. Daley has advocated for academic enrichment programs that help disadvantaged students pursue careers in health and science. She is the associate chancellor and chief diversity officer at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Daley also serves as director and principal investigator for the UCSD Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP), which provides academic support and resources to underrepresented and low-income students beginning in the seventh grade. HCOP has achieved impressive results, with more than 90 percent of participants entering college and more than 30 percent of those college graduates continuing on to graduate or professional school.

As a professor of pediatrics at the UCSD School of Medicine, Daley and her colleagues developed a $2 million endowment for, and established, the only medical school conditional-acceptance program in California. She also helped found the UCSD National Center for Leadership in Academic Medicine, which increased the number of women faculty and faculty of color at the medical school. Before joining the UCSD faculty, Daley was the medical director and executive director of the Comprehensive Health Center, an inner-city community health center serving the African-American and Latino communities in San Diego.

Daley was born and raised by her grandmother in Panama and moved to the United States to be with her mother at the age of 12. She is an alumna of the Kellogg Foundation National Fellowship Program, which led her to study grassroots organizing at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. She has received many awards, including the Salvation Army Woman of Dedication and the San Diego Business Journal’s Women Who Means Business awards. Daley received a bachelor’s in chemistry from the University of Albuquerque and a medical degree from the UCSD School of Medicine.

Ronald D. Garcia, PhD

Ronald D. Garcia is devoted to promoting cultural and linguistic diversity in the health professions workforce and preparing clinicians to be effective with increasingly diverse patient populations. He pioneered a nationally recognized higher education admissions procedure that looks at “distance traveled” by students in order to increase diversity in medical and health professional schools. Garcia is an assistant dean of minority affairs and program director of the Center of Excellence in Cultural Diversity at the Stanford University School of Medicine, which sponsors clinical and didactic curriculum offerings related to cultural competence and health care disparities.

Garcia is a senior lecturer at Stanford’s Center for Education in Family and Community Medicine and the associate director and director of admissions of the Primary Care Associate Program, offered jointly by Stanford University Medical Center and Foothill College. He is also a founding member of the California Health Professions Consortium, which works to ensure a diverse health workforce that meets the needs of the state.

Garcia was the faculty advisor to the Stanford Asian and Pacific Islander Medical Student Association, the Latino Medical Student Association, and several undergraduate premedical student groups. He has served on advisory boards associated with the U.S. Office of Minority Health, private foundations and various health profession groups. He was acknowledged as one of the 100 most influential Latinos in Silicon Valley by the Mexican-American Community Service Agency. Raised in Ventura, Calif., Garcia received a bachelor’s in English from California State University, Hayward, and then went on to receive three degrees from Stanford: masters’ degrees in education and psychology and a doctorate in educational psychology.

Jeffrey S. Oxendine

Over the last 28 years, Jeffrey S. Oxendine has worked as a health executive, educator and consultant dedicated to developing and increasing diversity in the health professions. He is co-founder and president of Health Career Connection (HCC), a nonprofit that has empowered more than 900 undergraduate students in California, New England and New York to pursue health careers. Oxendine is the associate dean of public health practice and directs the Center for Public Health Practice at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. He founded UC Berkeley’s Center for Multicultural Health and Center for Health Leadership, and serves as a faculty member in Health Policy and Management at the School of Public Health and the Haas School of Business.

Oxendine serves as co-director of the California Health Professions Consortium. He co-founded and co-chairs the Bay Area Coalition for Increasing Health Workforce Diversity, and co-founded and co-directs the California Health Workforce Alliance, a statewide public-private partnership addressing the needs of California’s growing health workforce. Oxendine served as co-director of the Connecting the Dots Initiative, which worked to advance diversity in California’s health professions. Before UC Berkeley, Oxendine held senior administrative positions in leading hospitals and medical groups including Partners Healthcare System and Alta Bates Medical Center.

Raised in Fairfield, Calif., Oxendine is a Native American from the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina. He has received many honors, including the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Public Service by a Faculty Member, the School of Public Health Distinguished Teaching and Mentorship Award, and the Insure the Uninsured Project Award. He received a bachelor’s in health care management from California State University, Chico, and masters’ degrees in business administration and public health from UC Berkeley.