'An awesome change agent' (video)

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For 18 years, the UC Davis chancellor has honored exemplary accomplishments that contribute in substantial ways to the development and well-being of the university’s diverse and evolving community.

When it came to naming a recipient for the postdoctoral scholar category, this year Chancellor Gary S. May presented Victoria Ngo with a Chancellor’s Achievement Award for Diversity and Community.

Victoria Ngo

“Dr. Ngo, you are an awesome change agent,” Renetta Garrison Tull, vice chancellor of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion said at the April 29 ceremony. “[You] demonstrate …commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion on campus and in our communities by engaging with nursing students, medical students, nursing professionals and nurse leaders on the issues surrounding heath disparities and equity.”

Ngo is a Health Systems and Community Leadership Postdoctoral Fellow at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis. She is also an alumna of the School of Nursing’s doctoral program. Her research focuses on health equity, population health and provision of high-quality care to underserved communities. She also studies how to optimize information technology to improve the delivery and coordination of care in the community. 

In collaboration with UC Davis Health faculty, she co-leads the Anti-Racism and Cultural Humility (ARC) project which addresses nursing diversity, inclusiveness, health equity and anti-racism. She has co-led and co-evaluated full-day trainings for health system nurse executives and nurse leaders.

Ngo said the achievement is an honor and a team effort.

“I am so proud to be a part of UC Davis because of its demonstrated commitment to be an equitable and inclusive institution,” she said. “I believe that a more representative workforce can generate innovative questions and solutions to the complex problems we face every day in health care. How we design effective interventions, for example, requires researchers to truly understand the community’s needs. That is why I am dedicated to this anti-racism and cultural humility work as a postdoctoral scholar.”

While pursuing her Doctor of Philosophy degree, Ngo served as program director in Health Coaching and created extensive curriculum for training medical assistant health coaches and nurse preceptors in the Central Valley, an area medically underserved with a known health care provider shortage. As a graduate student researcher, she worked extensively on research projects which included the Interprofessional Central Valley Road Trip. 

For the full list of this year's award recipients, see the Dateline feature.

Ngo co-teaches, develops and leads group research projects, classes and programs focusing on issues of identity, power imbalances and disparities in health status and health care delivery.

“Since joining the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, Dr. Ngo has been unwavering in her commitment to health equity and related research. This line of inquiry is vital if we are to understand which interventions work best for those who are most disadvantaged and who face the greatest barriers to access to care,” said Janice Bell, associate dean for Research. “It is also fundamental to achieving the school's vision of health equity for all, meaning that all people have an equal chance of reaching their full health potential without disadvantage by their race or ethnicity, socio-economic circumstances, environmental injustice, institutional racism or other structural inequities.”