Anmol Singh Mahal, M.D., CMA president-elect, has been appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to the state Health Professions Education Foundation Board of Trustees, which oversees a variety of scholarship and loan repayment programs designed to improve health care in medically underserved areas.

Dr. Mahal, who takes office as CMA president next month at the annual House of Delegates meeting, joins CMA past president Robert Hertzka, M.D., on the foundation board.

“I am pleased to be able to serve on this board whose goal is to improve access to care by encouraging young medical school graduates to practice in underserved rural and urban areas,” says Dr. Mahal. “This program is vital in helping physicians decide to locate in areas where California’s medically underserved live.

Among other programs, the board has oversight over the Stephen M. Thompson Physician Corps Program. The program offers up to $105,000 in loan forgiveness to physicians who provide care in underserved communities for at least three years, enabling newly graduated physicians with heavy educational debt to return to their communities to practice medicine.

The physician corps program was created in 2002 under a CMA-sponsored law and was renamed in 2004 in honor of CMA’s longtime vice president of government relations, Steve Thompson, who died of cancer in August 2004. There are now more than 50 physicians serving in the program in communities throughout the state.

Click here to read the press release announcing Dr. Mahal's appointment.

Contact: CMA Media Relations, 916/444-5532 or pwarren@cmanet.org.