Former Surgeon General David Satcher to Speak
On Sunday, June 3, 2007, 47 men and 57 women will be awarded the MD degree from UC San Diego School of Medicine, including three graduating with joint MD- PhD degrees. The ceremony will take place at 11 am on the ceremonial green off Osler Drive on the UC San Diego campus.
The 2007 commencement speaker is David Satcher, MD, PhD, 16th Surgeon General of the United States and former Assistant Secretary, only the second person in history to have held both positions simultaneously. Satcher spearheaded the development of Healthy People 2010 which included the elimination of racial and ethnic disparities in health. He also released 14 Surgeon General’s reports on topics that included tobacco and health; mental health; youth violence; and obesity prevention.
Commencement ceremonies for UC San Diego’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences will be held Saturday, June 2. (See website for details.)
“The brilliant minds emerging from UC San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy, represent a powerhouse of highly trained health practitioners who will be leaders not only in delivering, but in improving health care into the future,” said David Brenner, M.D., Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine at UC San Diego. “Their interdisciplinary training will help them lead the way to bridging the gap between scientific discovery and clinical applications.”
The top two specialty fields chosen by UC San Diego School of Medicine graduates represent internal medicine and pediatrics. 76 of the graduates will do all or part of their training in California; 19 will be medical residents at UC San Diego Medical Center.
In addition to their medical and research training at one of the nation’s top medical schools, the graduates of the UC San Diego School of Medicine have spent countless hours volunteering in community health outreach efforts including UCSD’s free clinics, offering life-saving medical care in underserved communities in San Diego, and as far away as India.
“Right now, there are not enough physicians being trained to meet the exponential growth of health care needs, nationally or globally,” said Robert Deiss, commencement speaker. “The MD degree gives us an opportunity to alleviate this situation; we are needed now more than ever.”
U.S. News’ most recent rankings of America’s Best Graduate Schools placed UC San Diego School of Medicine 14th in the nation. Students within the program are trained to practice leading-edge clinical medicine, and also to be engaged in revolutionary research that could affect the understanding, prevention, and treatment of disease worldwide.
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Media Contact: Jackie Carr, 619-543-6163, jcarr@ucsd.edu