Riverside – Michael N. Nduati, M.D., associate dean for clinical affairs in the UCR School of Medicine, is one of seven recipients nationally of the 2014 New Faculty Scholar Award from the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Foundation.

The award recognizes outstanding leadership potential in the area of family medicine education and supports Nduati’s participation in the 2014 spring conference of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine in San Antonio, Texas, in May. The society has a membership of nearly 5,000, including medical school faculty, residency program faculty and directors, and physician preceptors involved in family medicine education. Family medicine physicians provide primary medical care to people of all ages.

Nduati, in addition to helping develop the clinical arm of the UCR School of Medicine, is director of the school’s Longitudinal Ambulatory Care Experience (LACE), an innovative three-year component of the medical school curriculum that provides students a longitudinal “practice” embedded within the primary care clinics of the school’s affiliated health care partners.

LACE is designed to give medical students a “continuity-of-care” experience with a panel of patients while at the same time developing skills in research and evidence-based medical practice. UCR medical students are paired with physicians at several Riverside County family care centers, Riverside Medical Clinic, Kaiser Permanente sites in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and Riverside Physicians Network.

“We are proud of Dr. Nduati’s leadership in developing this innovative curriculum feature of the UCR medical school and so pleased that he is being recognized nationally for his work in medical education,” said G. Richard Olds, M.D., vice chancellor for health affairs at UCR and dean of the medical school.

“I am honored and humbled by this recognition,” said Nduati, also an assistant professor of family medicine in the UCR medical school. “This is validation that, in medical education, we can create new and innovative programs to prepare the physicians of the future and provide health care best suited to the post-Affordable Care Act world.”

Nduati joined the UCR School of Medicine in 2011. He earned his M.D. from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and completed residency training at the Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center. He also holds an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a master’s degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Nduati is a member of the J. W. Vines Medical Society an Inland Empire African American Physicians Association.