Grow Grant

What is the Grow Grant? 

The California Fund for Advancing Physician Education and Workforce Growth (also known as The Grow Grants) was established in 2025 through voter-approved Proposition 35 (2024). The $3.5 million fund distributes grants to invest in medical education initiatives and projects that improve California's future health care workforce. 

The UCSF Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) Residency Program has been awarded funding through the University of California Health Grow Grants program to support a new rural training track focused on California’s agricultural regions.

The Goal and Objectives

Goal:

• Expand the number of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) physicians serving California's agricultural communities by creating a residency rural training track in the San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys.

Objectives:

• Train more physicians in rural communities: Establish training sites in Fresno, Merced, and Salinas, giving 4 - 6 UCSF OEM residents hands-on experience each year. Two residents per year will have longitudinal rotations in these regions. 
   
• Provide specialized agricultural health training: Develop a curriculum focused on farmworker health issues, which includes heat illness, pesticide exposure, musculoskeletal injuries, wildfire smoke, and culturally competent care for the Latino and Indigenous farmworkers. The curriculum will be available to OEM residents from UCSF, UC Irvine, and Loma Linda and practicing to OEM physicians.
   
• Partner with local communities: Working with county health departments, agricultural employers, and farmworker organizations to ensure training addresses local needs and improves access to specialized occupational health care.

California does not have enough OEM Physicans

California has the largest workforce in the United States, with more than 18 million workers, yet it only has 2.6 board-certified OEM physicians per 100,000 workers. In contrast, many industrialized countries have ~40 board-certified OEM physicians per 100,000 workers. California is has a severe shortage of OEM specialists.

• In 2023, about 364,000 workers experienced a nonfatal job-related injury or illness, which is about 3 cases for every 100 workers.
   
• California's 400,000–800,000 farmworkers face especially high workplace risks. Agricultural workers die on the job at six times the rate of other workers (15.4 vs. 2.5 per 100,000).
   
• California farmworkers are also 35 times more likely to experience heat illness and 20 times more likely to die from heat stroke.
   
• Among surveyed farmworkers, 40% reported chronic musculoskeletal pain.
   
• Opportunities to improve worker safety remain: 43% of farmworkers reported that their employer did not have a heat illness prevention plan, 25% of pesticide applicators received no training, and 32% lacked respirators during wildfire smoke events.

Expanding the OEM physician workforce is essential to better prevent, diagnose, and treat the occupational health risks faced by California's agricultural workers.