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Dr. Arthur G. Gomez was appointed Senior Associate Dean of Medical Education at CDU on October 3, 2022. Dr. Gomez has significant experience as a medical educator and leads the College of Medicine’s medical education team—specifically the curriculum activities for the 4-year MD Program at CDU.

Dr. Gomez is a graduate of the University of California at Irvine, UCLA School of Medicine and completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at the UCLA-San Fernando Valley Program. He subsequently received further training as a General Internal Medicine UCLA Kennamer Fellow and as a Faculty Medical Education Fellow at David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) at UCLA’s Center of Medical Education, Research and Development. For over 30 years, Dr. Gomez’s focus has been on educating the next generation of physicians, focusing his research on medical education, cross-cultural medicine, and system-based care education for physicians-in-training. He is also known for his work on curriculum development for faculty, medical students, and residents in these areas as they relate to General Internal Medicine and Doctor-Patient Communications.

In Graduate Medical Education, Dr. Gomez has served as associate residency director for the UCLA San Fernando Valley Program, the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, and Cedars-Sinai Internal Medicine Program, sequentially from 2000-2020. For Undergraduate Medical education he chaired the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM) Doctoring curriculum focusing on the doctor-patient relationship and he was Clerkship Chair for Ambulatory Internal Medicine during those years from 2005-2020. From 2015 – 2020 he led DGSOM’s clerkship curriculum as Chair of Clerkships, and in 2020 he was entrusted with the development of a seminal course for the school’s new curriculum called Foundations of Practice. He has also led nationally with key positions at the National Association of VA Ambulatory Care Managers who elected him president, and for the Society of General Internal Medicine, co-chairing the national meeting in Toronto in 2007 and sitting on their council from 2008-2012. In 2023, he was honored with the Sherman M. Mellinkoff Award, considered the highest honor at DGSOM UCLA.

In research, his efforts have been funded over the years by educational grants such as the UCLA/Charles R. Drew Center of Excellence for Minority Medical Education in the 2000’s. The center was funded by a three-year federal grant to explore ways to improve upon minority health through research and physicians-in-training education. The grant was also designated to support the Center’s efforts to increase the number of minority physicians in clinical or academic careers by targeting students at every level of training from high school, undergraduate and medical school, to residency and beyond. He was principal investigator for a second grant “Linking Health Disparities Research to Medical Education” with Dr. Arleen Brown. The overall goal of that project was to significantly enhance the ability of physicians and physicians in training to address the health care needs of a complex ethnic/racial patient population in a culturally sensitive manner by developing, implementing, and evaluating a cultural competency curriculum. More recently he is one of the principal investigators in a HRSA funded grant to improve the skills of health care professionals in their care for patients with disabilities and limited English proficiency along with Dr Alice Kuo. CDU COM medical student are recipients of this novel curriculum.

“I believe there is much to be gained by coordinating the efforts across medical disciplines, among CDU’s 3 colleges, and in partnership with others such as UCLA, in the creation of a seminal curricula in a field of underrepresentation and vulnerability, training and enhancement for challenged communities facing obstacles related to language and disability. Every Primary Care trainee must be competent to do so.”