MD – Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Residency – Emergency Medicine, UCSF Fresno, Fresno, CA

Biography: Dr. Mackensie Yore, an emergency medicine physician, focuses her work on attending to differences between neighborhoods that affect the need for and use of emergency care and working with communities to craft policies to mitigate preventable emergencies and promote patient centered care. Her research also aims to promote humanism and a sense of trust and connectedness between patient and the medical team. 

Dr. Yore obtained a BA in Biochemistry from Wellesley College, her Medical Degree from Stanford University, and her Master of Science in Global Health Sciences from the University of California – San Francisco (UCSF). She completed her residency in emergency medicine at the University of California – San Francisco Fresno (UCSF Fresno) in 2021, where she served as Chief Resident and started the UCSF Fresno Health Equity Action Lab aimed at addressing health disparities and inequities experience by the diverse patient population served in the San Joaquin Valley.  

As a scholar in our program, Dr. Yore is leading a vulnerability and adaptation needs assessment on the health effects of climate change in Fresno County, partnering with the Fresno County Department of Public Health, the Central California Environmental Justice Network, the Fresno-Madera Medical Society, and a variety of other clinicians and community members in Fresno. The project team, known as Fresno Understands Environmental Resilience Through Equity (FUERTE), received grant funding totaling $176,938 from the California Resilience Challenge to carry out the work of characterizing health impact of extreme healt, wildfire smoke, and drought conditions on vulnerable and marginalized communities in the Fresno area through epidemiological mapping, focus group discussions, and photojournalism. Related to this work, Dr. Yore also received $5,000 seed grant funding from the UC Center on Climate, Health, and Equity to conduct in-depth interviews with community members, local government officials, and local industry on perceptions of climate-related health risks and who is responsible for action to build resilience. Both projects will serve as starting points for community-engaged solutions to mitigate harm to health from climate change in the California Central Valley. 

Dr. Yore is also working to promote humanism in the clinical encounter through the study and expansion of the VA-initiated My Life, My Story project, which gathers veterans’ life stories and includes them in the patient medical record as part of the social history. Dr. Yore is planning a study to better understand the mechanisms through which these narratives can positively impact care in a variety of clinical settings and reduce burnout in clinical care, both inside and outside of the VA health system.  

In addition to working on multiple projects, Dr. Yore is completing her master’s in Health Policy and Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She fulfills her clinical requirements in the emergency department at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center.