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KERN BUSINESS JOURNAL
October / November 2014
Clinica Sierra Vista welcomes first class of residents to Bakersfield family medicine residency program Editor’s note: Clinica Sierra Vista, one of the largest federally qualified health centers in the nation, welcomed its first class of medical school graduates to its Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency Program this year. Clinica Sierra Vista’s Chief Executive Officer Stephen W. Schilling and Carol Stewart, MD, FAAFP, program director of the Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency Program, shared the following with Kern Business Journal about the program and its medical residents.
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linica Sierra Vista is one of the largest federally qualified health centers in the nation, consisting of more than 70 sites in its three-county service area. For more than 42 years, Clinica Sierra Vista has been providing comprehensive primary care services to lowand moderate-income residents in Kern, Inyo, and Fresno counties. The Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency Program is a three-year postgraduate training program of six residency positions per year led by Dr. Carol Stewart. The program is sponsored and housed within Clinica Sierra Vista at the new East Niles Community Health Center in Bakersfield. It will soon have an academic affiliation with University of California, Los Angeles. Our first year class of residents consists of six culturally diverse individuals who represent the population in our community. Four of the six residents graduated from the UCLA PRIME program and have a two- to three-year commitment to
work in an underserved area after their residency training. Teaching health centers provide an optimal training environment for graduate medical education given their close faculty supervision and the emphasis on patient-centered care, and represent the future of high-quality trained medical providers. Primary care residents trained in this setting can immediately increase the clinical capacity of community health centers. The hope of our program is that we can retain the physicians to continue to serve, work and live in Kern County and Central California. We are aiming to address the shortage of primary care physicians and build a pipeline of health professionals who will practice in underserved areas. There is a maldistribution of primary care health professionals in Kern County. Research has indicated that providing of primary care services can lower health care costs, while sustaining excellent quality of care. Diagnosing and treating illnesses early has been seen to improve patient health and increase quality of life. In spite of this evidence, there exists a current physician shortage in the area of primary care. In July 2013, Clinica began a family medicine residency program in Fresno, California, which is named Sierra Vista Family Medicine Residency Program. Our goal of starting the two programs is to support the recruitment, training, and retention of family medicine physicians that are dedicated to serving the underserved in California’s central San Joaquin Valley.
Meet the residents: • Adan de Jesus Romero Born in Chalatenango, El Salvador, graduated from Universidad de El Salvador Facultad de Medicina. He has a three-year commitment to work and serve in an underserved area. • Rafael Chiquillo Sosa Born in San Salvador, El Salvador, graduated from Universidad de El Salvador Facultad de Medicina. He has a two-year commitment to work and serve in an underserved area. • Josue Fong Balart Born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, graduated from Instituto Superior de Ciencias Medicas de Santiago de Cuba. He has a three-year commitment to work and serve in an underserved area. • Hector Arreaza Born in Venezuela, graduated from Universidad Nacional Experimental ‘Romulo Gallegos’ Área de Medicina, San Juan De Los Morros, Venezuela. He has a two-year commitment to work and serve in an underserved area. • Cindy Her Born in Merced, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine. • Fernando Palacios Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, graduated from Ross University School of Medicine, Dominica.
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KDG simply has the best and the brightest. Congratulations to KDG partner Dustin Dodgin for being selected as a 2014 Southern California Rising Star by Super Lawyer magazine. Dustin practices in the areas of business and employment litigation and business counseling.
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