Mays selected for Dean’s Diversity Leaders group

Clinical social worker Markita Mays, LCSW, has been selected through a competitive process as one of the twelve Dean’s Diversity Leaders for the UCSF School of Medicine’s Differences Matter initiative. Together with Department of Medicine’s Rene Salazar, MD, Mays will lead the initiative’s first of six focus areas, which is aimed specifically at developing an informed and committed leadership within the School of Medicine that is educated to oversee a culture of inclusion and greater diversity. To this end, the focus area group will work towards developing a pipeline of diverse leadership candidates, creating and implementing career progression strategies which take the advancement of inclusion and diversity into account, developing a communication strategy to inform leadership on progress and highlight ongoing issues, and leveraging the power of the School of Medicine to advocate for change in medical schools across the country.

Mays, a native of San Francisco, is on staff at the UCSF Child Trauma Research Program at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, and maintains a private practice in Oakland. She earned her BA in human biology with an emphasis on African-American studies at Brown University, and later pursued her master’s degree in social work, focusing on children, youth, and families at California State University, East Bay. Her graduate and postgraduate trainings were completed at East Bay Agency for Children’s Therapeutic Nursery School, Early Intervention Services at Children’s Hospital, Oakland, and the UCSF Child Trauma Research Program.

In addition to direct service and clinical training, Mays has pursued advocacy on behalf of children of incarcerated parents. She is the co-founder of the Alameda County Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership (ACCIPP), a regional coalition focused on those who work with or are concerned about children of incarcerated parents. In October 2015, she was honored for her efforts by UCSF with the Chancellor's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Diversity.

The goal of the Differences Matter initiative is to create a truly inclusive culture and community that will work to close gaps in inequities in health and health care across all of the school’s missions, raising collective awareness of the impact of race on clinical, social and public health outcomes, as well as the role of personal unconscious bias. It aims to train students and residents to improve healthcare outcomes for all equally, and educate leaders to develop, foster, and nurture a culture of inclusion and achieve greater diversity. For more information, or to volunteer as an action group member, visit their website at medschool.ucsf.edu/differences-matter.
 

About UCSF Psychiatry

The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service. UCSF Psychiatry has an organizational structure that crosses all major UCSF sites - Parnassus, Mission Bay, Laurel Heights, Mt. Zion, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Medical Center, and UCSF Fresno.

About UCSF

UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy, a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences, as well as a preeminent biomedical research enterprise and two top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco.