Chicano/Latino Medical Student Association

The Chicano/Latino Medical Student Association is an organization dedicated to improving the health care delivery system to the Chicano/Latino communities. To accomplish this goal, CMSA's top priority is to retain all Chicano/Latino medical students at the USC School of Medicine, a commitment we now pledge to you. CMSA will make every attempt to make you feel at home in Los Angeles and help you build lifelong friends amongst the CMSA family. By offering peer support, counseling and mentors, CMSA will strive to develop and enhance your academic and cultural potentials and alleviate any barriers that may stand in your way of making a smooth transition into and through medical school. In addition, CMSA has been working very closely with the California Hispanic American Medical Association (CHAMA) and the Chicano/Latino Medical Association of California (CMAC) to make Chicano/Latino physicians in the Los Angeles area available for you to turn to for questions and concerns about the field of medicine.

The Chicano/Latino Medical Student Association of USC is playing an important role in building tomorrow's Chicano/Latino physicians today. CMSA attends all regional and national conferences which provides you with the opportunities to listen to influential Chicano/Latino leaders, to voice your opinions and to be kept abreast of the latest changes in Chicano/Latino health care. CMSA encourages all of its members to become active at the local health care level. Annually with CMSA of UCLA, we co-host and participate in the Olvera Street Health Fair which successfully provides medical services to over 4,000 local, uninsured, non-English speaking Chicano/Latino children, women, and men. CMSA of USC has also developed interconnections between our statewide CMSA Supernetwork Program and the National Network of Latino American Medical Students (NNLAMS) to make CMSA members more accessible for Chicano/Latino undergraduates to turn to for support and advice. Other on-going events designed to increase the number of qualified Chicano/Latino students applying to medical school include our Premedical Conference, Premedical UnderGraduate Mentor Program and High School outreach Talks.