Dean of David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA discusses her top priorities

Dr. Kelsey Martin, the new dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, didn ’t set out to become a physician. Driven by her interest in human behavior, she studied English and American language and literature as an undergraduate at Harvard. It wasn’t until she wasa Peace Corps volunteer in Central Africathat her passion for medicine was ignited. There, she organized an outreach program and wrote grants to fund measles vaccinations, which led to a dramatic reduction in the number of those sickened in the village where she worked. It was a profound turning point, one that led her to medical school, in a joint M.D./Ph.D. program at Yale, and postdoctoral work in neuroscience at Columbia.Martin, who recently was elected to theNational Academy of Medicine, is the first woman dean of UCLA ’s medical school, and she is among only a handful of women to lead a medical school in the United States. For this edited interview, she spoke with U Magazine editor David Greenwald. You can read the entire interview here.What have been pivotal moments in your life and your career that have prepared you for this role?Ann Johansson/UCLADifferent parts of my life have prepared me in different ways. As a Peace Corps volunteer, for example, I had to go into a village where there was no infrastructure, no institutions, and figure out on my own how to do the job I came to do — to set up a public-health program. I had a motorcycle to get around, but there were no repair shops, so I had...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news