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Program Staff

Program Directors

Michelle Bholat, MD, MPH - Co-Founder

Executive Director Associate Professor and Vice Chair
UCLA Dept. of Family Medicine

Dr. Michelle Anne Bholat serves as associate professor and Vice Chair, Clinical Affairs in the UCLA Department of Family Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Co-Director of the UCLA International Medical Graduate Program. Dr. Bholat graduated from the University of California, Irvine College of Medicine and completed a family medicine residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a public academic safety net hospital in Los Angeles County. She received a Masters Degree in Public Health from the University of California Los Angeles in Health Policy and Management.

From 1995 to 1999, Dr. Bholat served as Medical Director and Associate Residency Program Director of the Wilmington Family Health Center followed by three years as the Director of Clinical Operations for the UCLA Department of Family Medicine and Chair of Ambulatory Care Services for the UCLA Health Systems Westwood. Between 2000 and 2002, she served as liaison between the UCLA Department of Family Medicine and Olive View/UCLA Medical Center in developing a family medicine training site for the UCLA Family Medicine Residency Training Program. Further, she served as transition manager for the merger of the UCLA and Santa Monica Family Medicine Residency Programs. Up until recently, she has served as one of the five Commissioners on the LA County Board of Health and is a field surveyor for The Joint Commission Bureau of Primary Health Care.

In addition to her clinical and educational work, she serves as site director for grant projects related to chronic care as well as clinical trials related to substance abuse. She is a former fellow of the National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA) and active member of NHMAs California chapter.
Patrick Dowling, MD, MPH - Co-Founder

Associate Director
Professor and Chair
UCLA Dept. of Family Medicine

Patrick T. Dowling, MD, MPH is the Kaiser Permanente Professor of Community Medicine and Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. After graduating from the Medical College of Ohio, Dr. Dowling completed his residency training in Family Medicine at Cook County Hospital in Chicago under Jorge Prieto, MD and received a graduate degree in Health Policy/Administration from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He is board certified in Family Medicine, Preventive Medicine and Public Health and holds a certificate in Geriatrics.

Prior to assuming his post at UCLA in 1998, Dr. Dowling directed Family Medicine Residency training programs at Cook County Hospital, Brown University in Rhode Island and at LA County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He has served on the National Advisory Council of the National Health Service Corps, as a Commissioner of Public Health for LA County and is presently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Drew University of Medicine and Science in South Central LA. His professional interests involve linking graduate medical education to underserved communities as a means to improve access and reduce health outcomes disparities among racial and ethnic minorities. Further, his research interests include chronic disease management programs, cross cultural and bi-national medicine and the integration of substance abuse treatment programs within primary care. He is presently involved in an innovative program to prepare bilingual (English-Spanish) International Medical Graduates (IMGs) to become eligible for licensure and residency training in California. He learned that health care was a unique social good and basic right at his first position as the Medical Director of the United Farm Workers of America Clinics (UFW) under Cesar Chavez in California's Coachella and Imperial valleys in the 1970's.

Core Faculty

David Wallenstein, MD

Clinical Sciences

Dr. Wallenstein is a physician with the UCLA Palliative Care Service, the UCLA Sarcoma Program and a clinical assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Family Medicine. He is a general internist who also has training in anesthesiology, pain medicine and palliative care. Dr. Wallenstein has undergraduate and graduate degrees from The University of Chicago and prior to entering medical school at The University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago, was a clinical social worker with HIV, cancer and geriatric patients. He is involved in the comprehensive management of both chronic and cancer-related pain in the primary care setting, an interest that developed during his internal medicine residency at University of Illinois Hospital and his fellowship training at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan under the direction of Dr. Russell Portenoy, MD.
Ravi Dave, MD

Clinical Sciences
Dr. Luis Cazal

Basic Sciences
Darren Kelley

English for Health Professionals