Dr. Efrain Talamantes, M.D., M.B.A., M.Sc., FACP, Treasurer of the Board of Directors of National Medical Fellowships (NMF) and Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer for AltaMed Health Services, reflects on his last two decades serving historically underserved communities and advancing nationwide health equity initiatives.

Before Dr. Efrain Talamantes was a Board Member of NMF, he was a scholarship recipient.

“When I got into medical school, NMF was one of the first organizations that not only told me I was important and wanted me to be successful, but also demonstrated their commitment to my success by providing me with a truly transformative scholarship that changed my career trajectory.”

“Since then, it’s been about finding ways to give similar opportunities to other students who share my background and aspirations to improve health and health care.”

Dr. Talamantes, one of three siblings to immigrant parents from Mexico, remembers how difficult it was for his family to overcome structural barriers to accessing quality health care.

For example, he was asked to translate for his Spanish-speaking mother when she suffered a work-related injury while pressing clothes at a dry cleaner. He was eight years old. Later, he’d again be asked to translate for his grandmother, who suffered from bipolar disorder.

“I knew a college education would open up opportunities for me to contribute to improving community health,” he said. “But the financial burden for my family was significant.”

Against all odds, Dr. Talamantes earned his undergraduate degree in psychobiology from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), his medical degree from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and his business degree from the Emory University Goizueta School of Business.

“The scholarship I received from NMF equaled that of my parents’ annual income at the time.”

“So, once I graduated, I thought, how can I use my life experiences to inform what I do as a physician leader? How can I advocate for system-wide change and transform communities struggling to access high quality care?,” he said.

Dr. Talamantes first completed his internal medicine residency at UC Davis Health System.

“As an internal medicine physician, you need to be a great problem solver and also creative when helping people understand what it is they need to do to take better care of themselves,” Dr. Talamantes said.

“I also felt like I’d found my people in internal medicine,” he added. “In a culture where you’re always learning, questioning, and stretching yourselves across perspectives, you naturally gravitate toward those who share similar growth.”

Dr. Talamantes began his career as an academic hospitalist with UCLA Health and Veteran Affairs Greater Los Angeles Internal Medicine while earning his master’s degree in health policy and management from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program.

He then served as the inaugural medical director of hospital medicine and was part of the leadership team who reopened the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital.

“I was the hospitalist on-call who admitted the first patient,” Dr. Talamantes said. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I’ll never forget.”

Dr. Talamantes then returned to work with UC Davis Health as an assistant clinical professor, the associate program director of its internal medicine residency program, the associate director for its Center for Reducing Health Disparities, and the co-director of its Center for a Diverse Healthcare Workforce.

“I saw many medical school applications that weren’t reflective of all the great qualities non-traditional students bring into health care because they too often saw these qualities as deficits, or as struggles to overcome adversity they felt they had to hide.”

“I wanted to let students everywhere know those life experiences were greatly needed in medicine to not only become successful physicians, but also that they can be part of something bigger to drive greater impacts in their communities.”

Dr. Talamantes co-founded Alliance in Mentorship, the nonprofit developer of MiMentor.org, a nationwide mentoring network connecting tens of thousands of aspiring health professionals dedicated to serving the underserved.

He then accepted the opportunity to serve as medical director for the AltaMed Institute for Health Equity and Medical Education.

“I saw the possibility of building a community and practice large enough to say, I’m helping to create a community-based healthcare practice for the future,” Dr. Talamantes said.

As the inaugural Designated Institutional Officer for the AltaMed Graduate Medical Education Committee, Dr. Talamantes is responsible for the accredited Family Medicine Residency program and pathway programs throughout AltaMed dedicated to the recruitment of health professionals invested in improving access to care.

“We are now full circle. We can accept and mentor undergraduates to help them get into medical school, medical students on rotations to learn how to be great physicians in their communities, and residents and fellows who, when they are finished, can stay here if they so choose and practice with us.”

As senior vice president and chief operations officer for AltaMed Health Services, Dr. Talamantes shapes the experience of day-to-day care via patient-centered solutions across the entire health care delivery system, spanning more than 60 clinics throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

“More than 40,000 patients and their families are impacted during the career of every doctor we’re successful in bringing back to our communities,” Dr. Talamantes said.

As AltaMed continues to work alongside NMF in its mission to diversify the health care workforce, Dr. Talamantes hopes to implement health equity change from the top down (i.e. health care and education policy, collaboration between health plans, hospitals, and physicians with residency training programs and medical schools) and the bottom up (i.e. community partners, patient voices).

“We can’t have discussions about transforming communities without community partners, and if our patients only knew more, they could stand behind NMF on policy changes allowing them better access to high quality providers in their communities.”

“We can produce more physicians, but we also need good practices for them to practice in and stronger policies to support the quality care we can provide,” said Dr. Talamantes.