About
About UCLA NCSP
Like California itself, our site attracts scholars that span and serve a spectrum of economic, cultural, and ethnically diverse populations. We are committed to fostering and developing an environment and curriculum that promotes and supports our scholars’ passion in their work and training in health services research. Our scholars are also creative: working in the arts to develop plays on depression alongside community partners, finishing a book on human trafficking in Togo, participating in advocacy work on immigrant health, harnessing technology and big data to enact health system change and assess the impact of policy. The impact and possibilities of our scholar’s work are limitless and strengthened by interprofessional and multidisciplinary mentorship, leadership and skill building. This is both the beauty and the power of our local and national program.
UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program (NCSP) is committed to solving the most pressing societal challenges of our time—not least among them, addressing disparities and quality of care in an ever-changing healthcare landscape. Inspired by the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program (CSP), which for more than 40 years fostered the development of physician leaders able to transform health and healthcare, the university proudly launched the new UCLA NCSP in 2016. This post-doctoral education program builds upon the CSP legacy, with early career physicians and post-doctoral nurses participating in an intensive, highly-customized, two-year program that places them in community settings to conduct priority research directly benefiting the health of Southern California residents.
UCLA NCSP is joined by five other sites including the University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Yale University, and most recently, Duke University and UCSF. The NCSP retains the experience and central values of the highly successful RWJF/VA Clinical Scholars Program, including a commitment to teaching rigorous research design, ensuring Scholars develop a nuanced understanding of how the health system and social determinants affect health, engagement of those who can help apply research results, and emphasizing the outcomes and impact of research. Yet the NCSP builds upon this core strength, moving in a new direction by partnering directly with institutions and agencies sponsoring individual scholar positions, with a strong focus on commitment to partnering agencies and creating generalizable lessons for improving health of patients and communities.
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Our partners contribute invaluable expertise and/or resources to support the Scholars and their research, as well as the curricular and administrative core of the program. At the heart of the program, many members of our consortium fund and work directly with each Scholar to identify and develop projects to cultivate that Scholar’s unique research and leadership skills. We do so in a fundamentally innovative environment where partners play a major role in selection of Scholars, training, intensive mentorship, funding positions, and program governance.
Inter-professional training is also an essential feature of our program. Integration of physician and nurse researchers in training to advance the field of healthcare from different perspectives will shape the future of health and healthcare in ways that we have not seen before. Scholars will also benefit from inter-professional mentorship and leadership experiences. Scholars who have completed their medical degree and residency training, Doctor of Nursing Practice training, or PhD, will share this important experience, enhance each other’s career trajectories, and build a network of health professionals to lead change in the nation. Additionally, fellows from different departments and disciplines join us to further enrich this educational experience.
UCLA NCSP
This two-year fellowship program provides physicians and doctoral-trained nurses a unique opportunity to develop research and leadership skills to address the most pressing health care problems in our country. We are training the next generation of scientists and leaders in health and healthcare.
This is clearly not a traditional T32 or postdoctoral program. It’s a program with a passion and a purpose. These are scholars who are talented scientists, who want to look at healthcare and health services in a different way to address health inequities, disparities, and frankly, improve healthcare for all.
My time in the NCSP has deepened my understanding of the challenges patients face in accessing health care, and the organizations and policies that are in place to address these health disparities
I think there’s an emphasis on leadership in creating change and being disruptors of the medical field, that really appealed to me.