Stanislaus County native receives full ride to medical school from Sutter Health
MODESTO – A Stanislaus County native is one step closer to becoming a doctor, after being awarded a full ride to medical school.
Sutter Health announced she is one of only five recipients in the state to get this scholarship.
"A girl like me coming from the Central Valley, from my background, I would've never imagined I would've nominated for such a scholarship," said Anaissa Media, a Sutter Health Medical School scholarship recipient.
Medina is from Salida but is now going to school at Charles Drew University, a historically Black college that serves the community of Watts in South Central Los Angeles.
She is one of five scholarship recipients in California to get a full ride to medical school.
But she remembers her and her family's personal experience, dealing with language barriers and struggling to understand the health care system.
"Language barriers are huge, my family dealt with it. That was one of the huge reasons they didn't go for health care because they said I don't understand them how can I communicate to them," she said. "I remember my grandmother sighing with relief and her eyes welling with tears when she finally found somewhere that could help her."
It's a feeling Medina never wants other families to go through.
"As a girl, I never saw people that looked like me in these positions," Medina said.
Medina still has to go through medical school but when she graduates, she'll begin applying for residency.
A new accredited residency program was created for Memorial Medical Center in Modesto.
They will accept students starting next year but for Medina, it's exactly what she's looking for.
"When you look at schools outside the state they are typically filled with California medical students because we don't have enough space for them here in California. So this is an opportunity for us to bring them back home," said Dr. Robert Altman, the CEO of Gould Medical Group.
"It's a dream to go back to the Central Valley and serve there, there's a huge physician shortage in the Central Valley so to go back and help fix that problem, I'd love to be a part of it," Medina said.
That residency program will start taking applications in the spring of 2025.
It will bring 39 physicians to Stanislaus County with the hope of growing their own doctors.