Alicia Fernandez, M.D. is Professor of Medicine at UCSF, a general internist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Associate Dean of Population Health and Health Equity for UCSF SOM. She is the founding Director of the UCSF Latinx Center of Excellence, a HRSA and UCSF funded initiative to increase academic diversity. Dr. Fernandez directs the Latinx and Immigrant Health Research Program at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, which generates actionable research to increase health equity and reduce healthcare disparities.

Dr. Fernandez’s research interests are in health care equity with a focus on the role of language, literacy and cultural barriers in cardiometabolic disease care outcomes, patient experience, and patient-clinician trust. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Russell Sage Foundation and The Greenwall Foundation. She is an editor of the Lange textbook, Medical Management of Vulnerable and Underserved Patients (Lange,2nd edition).

Dr. Fernandez’ national service includes service on the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Board of Governors, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Board of Directors, and past service on NIH and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) study sections, as well as advisory or focused committees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National Academy of Medicine and other national health focused organizations. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2024 and appointed to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in January 2025.