UC Davis Medical Students Join Mee Memorial as Part of the University of California Rural Prime Program

 

KING CITY, Calif.-August 22, 2025 — A small cohort of UC Davis medical students is visiting Mee Memorial Healthcare System (MMHS) for 5 to 6 months out of the year as part of the Rural-PRIME system.

 

Rural-PRIME is part of the University of California's "PRograms In Medical Education" or PRIME, designed to produce physician leaders who are trained in and committed to helping underserved communities.

 

“The students primarily come from the communities that they will be serving," says Noah Hawthorne, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer at Mee Memorial Healthcare System. "It provides much-needed clinical experience for medical students outside of an academic environment, and increases their exposure to our health system. Students can form lasting relationships with communities, hospitals, clinics, and the physicians dedicated to enhancing health care in the region.”

 

The student rotations will take place predominantly at the Mee Memorial Greenfield Clinic. The program will be led by Drs. Alejandra Beristain-Barajas and Francis Rangel-Ventura, both family medicine practitioners, who are also graduates of the UC Davis Rural-PRIME system. “This means that the program will be coming full circle," says Dr Hawthorne.

 

Rural-PRIME has been working to build out Central Coast primary care providers for the past 10 years in collaboration with UC Santa Cruz, whose post-baccalaureate work in science helps those considering medical school by offering the opportunity to round out their academic experience before starting their program.

 

About Rural Prime:

 

UC Davis Rural-PRIME was created in 2007 to train future physician leaders committed to advancing health equity for California’s rural communities. Twenty percent of the population in California lives in rural areas, but only nine percent of physicians practice in rural settings.  With these disparities, rural patients have poorer outcomes on several measures than their urban counterparts: higher levels of chronic conditions, higher rates of hospitalizations, and higher rates of cancer deaths.  Rural-PRIME was developed to address the lack of access in rural areas and to reduce health care disparities in rural populations.

 

Key aspects of the Rural PRIME curriculum include: 

·         Additional education on topics relevant to rural communities, including rural public health issues, pesticide exposure, addiction medicine, rural law, and more

·         Visiting community organizations located in or serving rural communities

·         A minimum of 20 weeks during their clerkship year at sites located in California real communities

 

About Mee Memorial Healthcare System:

 

Mee Memorial Healthcare System is dedicated to delivering culturally sensitive, patient-centered care with the highest standards of service. The Mee network includes a hospital in King City with emergency services, acute care services, surgical services, skilled nursing, transitional care, rehabilitative services, and diagnostic imaging services, among others. The system also has several comprehensive outpatient clinics, a Clinic and a Children’s Health and Wellness Center in King City, and the Albert and Donna Oliveira Clinic, a full-service primary care facility in Greenfield.

 

MMHS is the primary healthcare organization serving the rural communities of Southern Monterey County. MMHS serves nearly 80,000 residents across a 50-mile stretch of Southern Monterey County, from the agricultural communities of Soledad to Bradley.