Bains’ ‘UC Kern’ bill advances to Senate floor

After an intense week of lobbying with hundreds of potential laws still to consider, the bill that would bring a state medical school to Kern County cleared the Assembly’s origin vote Wednesday with no opposition, advancing it to the state Senate floor for consideration.

Titled the “Grow Our Own” bill, or Assembly Bill 2357, the measure would pave the path for a branch campus of a UC School of Medicine in Kern to encourage more health care workers to stay in a region suffering from long-standing shortages.

“A medical school will provide the catalyst we need to improve health care access for one of California’s most medically underserved areas from medical professionals with roots in the San Joaquin Valley,” the bill’s author, Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, D-Bakersfield, said on the Assembly floor.

With its passage, the bill is expected to be voted on later this summer by a state Senate committee, following legislative budget hearings. While it’s at the discretion of the state Senate as to where the bill will land, a representative of Bains’ office said it would most likely go before the state Senate Higher Education Committee.

This came after the bill last week escaped the suspense file — one of two hearings held each year in which the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee culls hundreds of bills in rapid succession. Of the 1,009 bills on suspense file between the Assembly and state Senate committees, 689 advanced to the corresponding floor, while 320 were held — a 6.7% uptick in holds that lawmakers attribute to the state’s looming deficit.

Of the 10 bills Bains proposed, more than half made it through the suspense file. While several have already hurdled over to the Senate’s side of the fence, some — like Bains’ Xylazine bill as well as her bill on transnational repression — await an Assembly vote this week.

But her “UC Kern” bill is the highest priority this legislative session.

It's been 19 years since any UC opened; the newest campus is UC Merced, which is licensed to offer medical education as a branch of UC San Francisco. Budding medical students from the Central Valley instead go to faraway schools, and often they do not return.

Meanwhile, the Central Valley region is among “the fastest growing, poorest and least healthy regions of California,” according to a 2022 University of California news release. It has the fewest doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners per capita of any region in the state. About 30% of that existing workforce is near the age of retirement, while an estimated 70% of children live on Medi-Cal.

Statewide, more than 7 million Californians, mostly minorities, live in areas with less than one primary care physician for every 2,000 residents, state health officials say.

In the time since Bains first announced the bill in February at the State of the County address, it has garnered support from colleagues in the state Legislature, as well as from the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, California Life Sciences and local ag giant The Wonderful Co., based in Los Angeles.

“The need to recruit more doctors to the San Joaquin Valley cannot be understated,” the Kern Board of Supervisors wrote in a joint letter. “Creating a medical school in Kern County will allow us to 'grow our own' by recruiting local medical students, expanding local residency programs and offering new doctors the opportunity to practice medicine close to home.”