MD – New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY
Residency – Emergency Medicine, UCSG-SFGH, San Francisco, CA

Biography: Dr. Jesus R. Torres, an Emergency Medicine physician, has a wide breadth of academic interests which includes social emergency medicine, global health, and infectious disease. His research is centered on language justice in the emergency department (ED), COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among vulnerable populations, elucidating pre-hospital care metrics in the Western Hemisphere and infectious disease clinical trials.

While in our program, Dr. Torres was a recipient of the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) TL1 Postdoctoral training grant. He was also co-funded by the Emergency Medicine IDHEAL Fellowship. Over two years, Dr. Torres engaged in a wide range of research studies. His main research project is titled, “Paving the way: Advancing emergency care in the Americas” in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)/World Health Organization (WHO). In this ongoing project, Dr. Torres defined a PAHO indicator and constructed a multiple-item survey designed for health ministries of the 35-countries in the Americas to establish pre-hospital care metrics. His primary mentors were Dr. Breena Taira (UCLA), Dr. David Talan (Olive View-UCLA), Dr. Robert M. Rodriguez (UCSF) and Dr. John Brown (UCSF). His work resulted in a pre-hospital care policy brief published by the WHO. Additionally, Dr. Torres published several multicenter studies on COVID-19, detailing vaccine acceptance among patients in the ED, leading to the initiation of vaccine administrations in ED and among undocumented Latinx patients. He also published on language justice in the ED, describing language barriers and disparities from a trainee and nursing staff perspective and served as a clinical trial co-investigator for studies on COVID-19 home tests and traumatic brain injury biomarkers. He is currently a co-investigator on a skin and soft tissue infection study, investigating immunologic features responsible for infection recurrence, which is forming the basis of a future S. aureus vaccine trial.

Dr. Torres had a productive fellowship with over 12 co-authored peer reviewed articles and abstracts, 1 book chapter and numerous presentations at regional and national emergency medicine conferences. He was also awarded funding from different agencies including the David Geffen School of Medicine and PAHO. Dr. Torres completed his Master of Science in Health Policy and Management in 2021. Additionally, Dr. Torres has made at least 10 appearances in Spanish language television news programs detailing his work in the Latinx population and updating the community on COVID-19 matters.

Following NCSP, Dr. Torres transitioned to a full-time position as Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Department of Emergency Medicine research division at UCLA.