Year 4. December 29. A New Year Starts This Week
In my last post for 2025, I share some thoughts on the year past as we look forward to the year ahead.
Much has been said over the past few weeks about the many challenges the past year brought us and the myriad ways you all showed up for one another to see us through. Your dedication to our missions also made it possible for us to make steady progress on our goals under the UCLA Department of Medicine (DoM) Strategic Plan despite heavy headwinds: from the wildfires that displaced members of our community, to the funding uncertainties that tested our researchers, to personal hardships that touched many colleagues. Each time, the department rose as one. We lifted each other and reaffirmed our commitment to Lead in Innovation, Transform Care and Advance Health for All.
Join me in reflecting on and celebrating our community’s achievements across our missions in patient care, research, education and community engagement.
Some highlights of my recorded remarks are below.
In 2025, our excellence in patient care continued to be recognized by respected national and local organizations, including top rankings of DoM specialties by U.S. News & World Report and Vizient. We expanded our world-class care with new clinical services in Atascadero, San Luis Obispo and the West Valley, and we are working closely with the UCLA Health System to ensure that we can sustain this growth moving forward. 2026 will see further expansion, with new ambulatory practices slated for Inglewood, Long Beach, West Adams and more.
Just as our clinical mission flourished, our research community persevered through what can best be described as a cyclone of challenges in federal funding, from shifting priorities to grant suspensions. In spite of these difficulties, we continued to make discoveries that address some of medicine’s most pressing challenges. DoM investigators continued to be highly successful in obtaining federal funding and earned recognition for scientific excellence from multiple organizations including the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the National Academy of Medicine. We published thousands of publications that will influence the field for decades to come. Both faculty and trainees shone bright at conferences, including our own annual Research Day, which brought together 115 abstracts and 325 attendees. Next year will see even more documentation of our department’s indominable creativity as we launched the new publication DoM Clinical Insights, a companion to the Proceedings of the UCLA Department of Medicine.
Achievements in our education mission are many and included one of the year’s greatest points of pride: recruitment. We welcomed an exceptional class of residents in our internal medicine, primary care, med-peds, PM&R, dermatology and the STAR physician-scientist training program, and in 2026 we will welcome 101 fellows across 22 subspecialities, one of our strongest fellowship classes yet. We also expanded our training footprint with a new clerkship site at Kern Medical, which will open up impactful medical education opportunities to our learners and expand our impact in new communities.
Our community engagement mission was equally robust this year. The inaugural DoM in LA Summit brought our community to campus for a powerful day of listening, dialogue and shared vision. Our faculty and staff cared for patients at Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), safety hospitals and volunteered at local food banks, tended the VA community garden and strengthened our partnerships across L.A. These efforts reflect the heart of who we are: a department grounded in service, equity and community.
None of this progress would be possible without the quiet engine that keeps all of us moving forward: our administrative teams. Thank you for anticipating challenges before they arise, for creating solutions and for giving our clinical, research and education missions the strong foundation they need to thrive. Your work may be behind the scenes, but its impact is felt everywhere.
Our Strategic Plan will remain our guiding light as we navigate new waters in 2026 and beyond. I look forward to the many accomplishments the new year will bring, with you leading the way.
Happy New Year.
Dale
P.S.
After the deluge following the Christmas weekend, things are drying out, including driveways.I saw this driveway this morning, drying out. Let me know what you think I saw.
Related Posts
As we close out the year, when many of you will gather to spend time with friends and family, I want to express my gratitude[...]
An essential pillar of the department of medicine’s strategic plan is community engagement and investment. Specifically, as members of a public university, we are committed to advancing[...]
Each year, hundreds of senior medical residents across the country apply for sub-specialty fellowship positions. It is an intense time of interviews, after which they submit their[...]