Tonya Fancher, M.D., M.P.H.
Associate Dean for Workforce Innovation and Community Engagement
Tonya Fancher, M.D., M.P.H., is the Associate Dean for Workforce Innovation and Community Engagement and the Interim Associate Dean for Student and Resident Diversity, overseeing the medical school's efforts to create a physician workforce to meet the needs of the region and the state.
In partnership with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, Fancher oversees the Accelerated Competency-based Education in Primary Care (ACE-PC) Program, a three-year physician pathway for students entering primary care internal medicine and family medicine. ACE-PC is the only three-year physician program in California, and flips the traditional medical school approach by starting week one with clinical skills and immersion in a longitudinal primary care clinic.
Fancher also oversees the TEACH-MS program, which trains medical students committed to providing primary care for vulnerable urban communities; the REACH PRIME program, which prepares medical students to work in the Central Valley; and the Rural PRIME program, which trains medical students for rural practice.
Fancher is principal investigator and Director of the Center for a Diverse Healthcare Workforce, which leads research focused on recruiting, training, and retaining a diverse healthcare workforce. In collaboration with the Health Resources and Services Administration, the center partners with educational institutions, policy makers and community organizations to learn about the workforce needs unique to their underserved communities, and to jointly develop new programs and potential solutions.
Fancher is principal investigator on the American Medical Association's (AMA) Accelerating Change in Medical Education grant that created ACE-PC, and serves on the AMA Consortium's Executive Board. She is co-principal investigator on one of the AMA's eight new Reimagining Residency grants – a partnership with OHSU known as COMPADRE (California Oregon Medical Partnership to Address Disparities in Rural Education and Health). The COMPADRE grant is a regional collaborative of health care systems, GME programs and FQHCs to address workforce shortages in rural, tribal, urban and under-resourced communities between Sacramento and Portland. COMPADRE will build more pathways to prepare students and trainees to serve where they are most needed, and reduce health disparities by creating a physician workforce that is better prepared, more equitably distributed, and more deeply connected to underserved communities.
After completing a primary care general internal medicine residency at NYU and Bellevue Hospital, Fancher spent four years in the U.S. Air Force stationed at Travis Air Force Base. Her scholarly interests are in medical education, primary care, and development of a diverse healthcare workforce to meet the needs of California. Fancher graduated from Cornell University where she majored in classics and biology. She is crazy about dogs and has a 10-year-old rescued Australian Cattle Dog named Sydney.