UC Irvine’s Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community marked its 20^th anniversary with a grand celebration on Oct. 18 featuring some of the nation’s leading voices in healthcare and higher education.

Joining Steve Goldstein, UC Irvine vice chancellor for health affairs, and University of California President Michael V. Drake in making remarks were Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Diana Ramos, California’s surgeon general. 

More than 200 people attended the proceedings at the Sue Gross Auditorium in the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences pavilion, including many PRIME-LC alumni.

A first-of-its-kind program, PRIME-LC has fostered the education of more than 180 physicians who address the needs of underserved communities, often becoming advocates of well-being for all. 

“What happens in California leads the nation, and the importance of PRIME-LC is that equity is in its design,” said Becerra. “At HHS, we put equity into the design of everything we do.”

Nearly all PRIME-LC’s alumni are making a difference in the community, working as attending physicians who practice in neighborhoods with a high percentage of low-income Latino patients, and two-thirds report that they use their leadership skills to advance the cause of Latino health equity outside their medical practices.

“The ‘secret sauce’ of PRIME-LC is finding students well suited to serve underserved communities,” said Drake, who was UC Irvine’s chancellor from 2005 to 2014, during PRIME-LC’s early days. “When we started PRIME, we knew whether we’d got it right by seeing what its graduates were doing in three to five years – and seeing how many had taken leadership positions outside their practices.Graduates from the program serve because they are well trained, and it’s what they want to do.”

“It’s the individual students who participate that have taken this program from a great idea to an incredible differentiator in the broader Latino community,” Goldstein said.

Based on its early success, UC Irvine’s PRIME-LC program became a model for other institutions, and by 2007 all the University of California medical schools had begun PRIME programs focused on specific underserved populations. In 2019, UC Irvine continued its bold vision of training physicians who reflect California’s varied residents with the launch of Leadership Education to Advance Diversity – African, Black and Caribbean communities, the first to specifically address the needs of the ABC population. In 2021, LEAD-ABC was designated as the second PRIME program on campus. And a PRIME program for the LGBTQ+ community is currently being developed at UC Irvine.

“PRIME-LC brings together the community and diversity of California,” Ramos said to the PRIME-LC students and alumni in the audience. “The doctors trained by PRIME-LC will be the future of our healthcare. Ten years from now, we are going to be practicing medicine in a whole new way, and you will be our leaders.”

Michael J. Stamos, dean of the UC Irvine School of Medicine, introduced Sarah Lopez, a graduate of the first PRIME-LC class, and current PRIME-LC student Karlos Manzanarez Felix, who shared their thoughts about what makes their program so important.

“All of us were drawn here to make a lasting change in healthcare,” said Lopez, chief medical officer for Zocalo Health, a new healthcare organization dedicated to providing accessible care to the Latino community in Southern California.

The event concluded with Stamos’ heartfelt recognition of Alberto Manetta, the UC Irvine physician, researcher and educator who conceived of PRIME-LC and, with Drake, started the program in 2004. He died in 2022, and his wife and daughter, Nancy and Katy Manetta, attended the event in his memory. 

“Next to his family, my father’s great love was his students,” Katy Manetta said.

“For a program like this to work, it needs passion and dedication,” said Drake, who served as the UC’s vice president of health affairs from 2000 to 2005. “And that was Al Manetta, the person who came to us with the idea of creating a Latino medical education program. We wanted UC Irvine to be a leader in what medical education ought to be for the country.”