Katherine A Flores

Katherine A. Flores (born 1953) is a family physician and an Associate Clinical Professor in Family Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, in the United States. She is one of the founding members of the National Hispanic Medical Association. Flores founded a range of programs focused on increasing the number of culturally competent doctors serving the Latino communities in California's Central Valley. The programs support traditionally underserved student populations to successfully pursue education and medical careers.

Childhood and family life Flores' family migrated from Mexico to the United States, where they worked as farm laborers. Born in Fresno, California, USA, Flores' mother died when she was just an infant. and began working with Latino organizations on the state and national level. She focused on increasing the number of medical professionals who are Latino. These experiences convinced Flores that she could go to medical school and contributed to her belief that helping other students succeed would also be part of her life's work.

Beyond her private practice and work at UCSF, Flores has long been active in other organizations that work on recruiting, training, and retaining medical personnel to work with Latino and other underserved populations.

Some of the programs Flores has created focus on school success even before college. The Junior and High School Doctors Academies are run through a partnership between California State University, Fresno, and local school districts. It began at Sunnyside High School in 1999, and expanded to Caruthers and Selma high schools in 2007. The program recruits students from low-income families in the Fresno area as early as seventh grade, and supports them through high school and college. With special classes daily, as well as tutoring and internships, these programs focus on increasing students' self-confidence and study skills. In a school district with a reported twenty-five percent graduation rate in the early 2000s, Doctors Academies sustained a one hundred percent graduation rate for students who stuck with the program.