Division History

The Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at UCLA was created in 1972, when Department Chair David Solomon recruited Charles E. Lewis to head a new general internal medicine division. Chuck agreed to take the job on the condition that "health services research," be part of the name, to assure that all understood that the division was devoted to research, as well as to education and patient care. Chuck led the division for 17 years. His initial recruits were four outstanding faculty members: Sheldon Greenfield (a clinician-investigator who co-led the Medical Outcomes Study and served as president of SGIM), Roy Young (a clinician-educator who established a primary care track in the residency program and the Medical Ambulatory Clinic, later serving as Vice-Chair (then acting chair) of the Department of Medicine, and program director for the internal medicine residency), Robert Brook (a clinician-investigator who established the UCLA Clinical Scholars Program and co-led the RAND Health Insurance Experiment and other major studies), and Dennis Cope (a clinician-educator who succeeded Roy as leader of the primary care track of the residency and as clinic director, and later served as GIM division chief at the University of South Carolina, then as Chair of Medicine at Olive View). After Chuck stepped down, the next permanent division chief was Martin Shapiro, appointed in 1991. Under Martin’s 25 years of leadership, the division increased in size and became one on the most diverse health services research groups in the Nation. In Fall of 2016, Carol Mangione became the third division chief. The West Los Angeles/Sepulveda VA GIM division was established under the leadership of Paul Shekelle.

The Division began to grow after 1980 when young clinician-investigators and a small number of clinician-educators began to join the division. After 1992, the numbers of clinician-educators began to grow substantially thanks to support from the Department of Medicine. Today, there are almost 300 faculty members associated with the Division, including large numbers of ambulatory and hospitalist clinician-educators. The primary care track of the residency was disestablished in 1993 but reestablished in 2009 and in 2017 has grown to have 12 positions in each year. UCLA is proud to have many division members with vibrant research programs that span domains that include access to care, health disparities, quality of care, HIV prevention and treatment, diabetes prevention and treatment, quality of care, health care policy, mental health, adolescent health, health economics, health status and patient-reported outcomes. The Division includes three economists, a social psychologist, multiple faculty with MDs as well as PhDs, and a number of postdoctoral research and clinical training programs.

Leadership and Staff

Carol Mangione, MD, GIM Division Chief
Michael Lazarus, MD, Hospitalist Chief
Paul Shekelle, MD, VA Chief
Michael K. Ong, MD, PhD, VA Hospital Medicine Chief
Norma Vaquerano, MSO
Blanche Berzamin, Interim MSO for Med-Peds

Contact Us

Research Offices:
1100 Glendon Avenue, Suite 850
Los Angeles, CA 90024