At the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, an extraordinary gift is helping to create a cadre of physicians like William Sheppard, Jr., with the vision and leadership to alter the future course of medicine—for all of us.
When UCLA med student William Sheppard Jr. asks his own family members if he can check their blood pressure, they don’t want any part of it. “They don’t trust medicine at all,” he says. “They’d rather not know.”
Having grown up in South Los Angeles, an underserved, mostly African-American community, Sheppard is no stranger to the lack of trust in healthcare and lack of awareness about chronic conditions that prevail in impoverished areas. He understands that lives are lost all the time because of these attitudes, and he is determined to do something about it. Thanks to a remarkable gift from a visionary donor, Sheppard’s dream to become one of a new generation of doctors who actively seek to connect the way they practice medicine to the needs of the community can come true — without his ever having to pay for medical school.
The David Geffen Medical Scholarships, created by a historic gift of $100 million by entertainment mogul and philanthropist David Geffen, pay for the medical education of the best students entering UCLA’s medical school each year. These merit-based scholarships, based on the simple idea that the cost of a world-class medical education should not deter our future innovators, doctors and scientists from the path they hope to pursue, cover full tuition, room and board, and books and supplies for all students who qualify.
Freed from six-figure, career-dictating debt, scholarship recipients can pursue the kind of practice they are passionate about rather than a high-paying specialty that can pay off their school loans. For Sheppard, that means practicing in an underserved area and dedicating his time to educating the population about healthier lifestyles. Already in pursuit of his goal, Sheppard is currently a volunteer student medical coordinator at the UCLA Mobile Clinic, which provides medical, social and legal services to homeless and underserved populations in Los Angeles. “This scholarship is about much more than just having the costs of my education paid for,” says Sheppard. The gift, he explains, “provides me with the opportunity to connect with our school’s leaders and with leaders in the communities I plan to serve. It doesn’t get any better than that.” And that, it seems, is just what the doctor ordered.
“We need the students at this world-class institution to be driven by determination and the desire to do their best work and not by the fear of crushing debt.” -David Geffen