Community Resources

The School of Medicine focuses on outreach, scholarship, and education that can be a valuable resource for developing diversity and cultural competence in academic medicine. Not only does this focus address issues such as eradicating health care disparities, providing services to the community, and re-shaping the legacy of the University in regard to diverse communities, it also helps build diversity into the next generation of health professionals. Education and awareness programs in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, are powerful influences on career aspirations.

The UVA Division for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion is deeply committed to enhancing the wellbeing, safety and success of all UVA faculty, students, staff, alumni, visitors and our neighbors. We achieve our mission through the coordinated and collective impact of the Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights; the Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; and the Center for Community Partnerships.

A UVA democracy initiative center for the redress of inequity through community engaged scholarship. The equity center grows out of many years of social justice advocacy in Charlottesville and the surrounding region, and the groundbreaking work of organizations like UCARE that have worked tirelessly to call on our university to redress racism in the local community.

The Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVA will serve as the collective voice of all descendants of enslaved and free Black communities who labored at the University of Virginia through research, education, and preservation.
Their mission is to research and reclaim the narrative, to honor the legacies of enslaved and free Black communities and their descendants, and to achieve restorative justice for communities rooted at the University of Virginia and surrounding regions.

At UVA’s School of Medicine, we focus on outreach, scholarship, and education that can be a valuable resource for developing diversity and cultural competency in academic medicine. Not only does this focus address issues such as eradicating health care disparities, providing services to the community, and re-shaping the legacy of the University in regard to diverse communities, it also helps build diversity into the next generation of health professionals. Education and awareness programs in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, are powerful influences on career aspirations.

SOAR (Summer Opportunities in Academic Research) is an 8-week summer program for high school students in Charlottesville and Albemarle County seeking to immerse themselves in an exciting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) research environment. SOAR aims to provide hands-on research and academic experience to high school-level students who are “under-represented” in STEM, as defined by NIH guidelines. Participating students are paired with research mentors at the University of Virginia (UVA) and introduced to numerous topics and career avenues in science and medicine during morning didactic sessions and afternoon research in mentor labs. Through these experiences, SOAR encourages high school students to pursue careers in science through education and mentoring in biomedical research.

UVA Health strongly supports the LGBTQ community and continues to provide gender-affirming care, services, and support for patients going through gender transition. UVA Health doesn’t discriminate, exclude, or treat differently patients or visitors based on their race, age, color, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or gender expression.

The UVA Latino Health Initiative (LHI) is an organization of the University of Virginia that aims to improve the health and wellbeing of the Latino community in the Charlottesville area and by doing this narrow the gap between the University of Virginia and this community. LHI is supported by faculty members from the School of Medicine other colleges and more than 50 graduate and undergraduate students. With an engaged community advisory board and a faculty advisory group, we run 5 different community health programs: The Latino Clinic, the Cardiovascular Initiative for the Latino Community Health, the Compañeros Training, and Empowerment Program, Family Health Evenings at Southwood, and an educational radio program.

The faculty and staff of the Center for Global Health Equity work to support the development of global health leaders and global health capacity with partner institutions, organizations, faculty and students.