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Bernadette "Bernie" Lim (born July 15, 1994) is an American physician and community organizer. She is the founder of the Freedom Community Clinic based in Oakland, CA. She is lecturer faculty at the Institute for Holistic Health Studies at San Francisco State University. [1]
Lim was born in Los Angeles, CA. [2] She attended St. Lucy's Priory High School in Glendora, CA and served as the California-Nevada-Hawaii KIWIN'S Governor for Key Club International. [3] Lim attended Harvard University where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Human Evolutionary Biology and Global Health and received cum laude honors. [4] As part of her undergraduate career, she created Women SPEAK, a national girls' empowerment non-profit and was the lead author of the first Status of Women and Girls in Boston report. [5] [6] [7] [8] She was also a regular contributor to The Harvard Crimson. [9] Lim was made a Fulbright scholar in 2016, and moved to Pune, India to pursue public health research on gender disparities among healthcare workers. [6]
She completed her masters and medical education at UC Berkeley School of Public Health and UCSF School of Medicine in 2017, as part of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. [2] [10] [11] During her time in medical school, she founded several initiatives related to community health, health equity, and racial justice, including the Freedom School for Intersectional Medicine, the Institute for Healing & Justice in Medicine, and the Woke WOC Docs podcast. [2] [12] [13] [11] [10] [14] She wrote her Masters thesis on Filipino youth health disparities. [2] She is an activist and speaker on eliminating inequities in health care and expanding integrative medicine for underserved populations. In 2019, she was honored as the youngest ever recipient and only medical student awardee of the National Minority Quality Forum 40 Under 40 Leaders in Minority Health. [11]
In 2019, Lim founded the Freedom Community Clinic in Oakland, CA while in medical school. During medical school, Lim would participate in community organizing efforts for youth and gained mentorship from activists such as Dr. Tolbert Small, former physician to the Black Panther Party. [15] [16] Motivated by her family's experiences of trauma in the medical system, her Filipino-Toisan ancestry, and her involvement in community organizing, she started the Freedom Community Clinic, a non-profit that combines the strengths of ancestral and holistic healing with Western biomedicine and provides direct healing services to Black, Brown, Native, and immigrant communities in the Bay Area. [15] [17] [18] She started the clinic through the Oakland Youth Impact Hub and held several pop-up healing clinics on the streets during its beginnings. [19]
In 2021, Lim announced on Twitter that she would not be applying to residency after graduating medical school in order to pursue her work at Freedom Community Clinic full-time. [20] She writes and speaks often about issues of health and well-being in academic medicine and holistic healing for underserved communities. [21] [22]
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It conducts research and teaching in medical and biological sciences.
UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland formerly known as Children's Hospital Oakland, is a pediatric acute care hospital located in Oakland, California. The hospital has 191 beds and is affiliated with the UCSF School of Medicine. The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens and young adults aged 0–21 throughout Northern California. UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland also features a Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center, one of five in the state.
The American Meditation Institute (AMI) was founded by Leonard Perlmutter and Jenness Cortez Perlmutter in 1996. The Perlmutters were influenced by Eknath Easwaran and Nisargadatta Maharaj; they were direct disciples of Swami Rama of the Himalaya Mountains, the man who, in laboratory conditions and under the observation of research scientists at the Menninger Clinic, demonstrated that blood pressure, heart rate, and the autonomic nervous system can be voluntarily controlled. These research demonstrations have been one of the major cornerstones of the mind-body movement since the 1970s.
Susan Kolb is a medical doctor in Atlanta, Georgia, and the author of The Naked Truth about Breast Implants: From Harm to Healing. Her area of specialization is plastic and reconstructive surgery. Kolb is a medical authority on the complications arising from breast implants, and has been an active voice in the debate about the safety of breast implant devices since 1996. She has treated over 2,000 women suffering from breast implant disease and related systemic immune disorders.
UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital is a children's hospital system in Oakland, California, affiliated to the University of California, San Francisco. It has four campuses: the Parnassus Campus, the Mount Zion Campus, and the Mission Bay Campus, and the Oakland campus.
Helen Octavia Dickens was an American physician, medical and social activist, health equity advocate, researcher, health administrator, and health educator. She was the first African-American woman to be admitted to the American College of Surgeons in 1950, and specialized in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Barbara Ross-Lee, D.O. is an American physician, academic, and the first African-American woman to serve as dean of a U.S. medical school; she is also known as the sister of Diana Ross along with being the aunt of actress Tracee Ellis Ross, and singer-songwriters Rhonda Ross Kendrick and Evan Ross. She majored in biology and chemistry at Wayne State University, graduating in 1965. Then, in 1969, she entered Michigan State University's College of Osteopathic Medicine. Ross-Lee then went on to open her own private family practice, teach as a professor, and hold other positions within the medical community. In 1993, she was elected as the first woman dean of a medical school, at Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. She has earned several awards and honors for her work and accomplishments.
LaShyra "Lash" Nolen is an American medical student and science communicator. She is the first Black woman to become class president of the Harvard Medical School. In 2020 Nolen was selected by The Root as one of their Young Futurists.
Kimberly Dyan Manning is an American physician. She currently serves as a Professor of Medicine as well as the Associate Chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Department of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. Manning has been recognized at the national level for her mentorship and teaching as well as her blogging and public speaking. She is the winner of the ACGME Parker J. Palmer Courage To Teach Award, the Evangeline Papageorge Award, and her blog “Reflections of a Grady Doctor” was named as one of the top four medical blogs by “O” The Oprah Magazine.
Jacqueline Nwando Olayiwola is an American family physician, public health professional, author, professor, and women's empowerment leader. She is the Senior Vice President and Chief Health Equity Officer of Humana and a chair and Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Prior to her appointment at OSU, she served as the inaugural Chief Clinical Transformation Officer for RubiconMD, an eConsult platform that improves primary care access to specialty care for underserved patients. Olayiwola is dedicated to serving marginalized patient populations and addressing the social determinants through community and technology-based infrastructures of healthcare reform. She has published articles on the use of eConsults and telehealth to provide underserved patients with primary care treatments so that they have a low cost and efficient means of reaching specialized care. Olayiwola has founded numerous non-profits and healthcare start-ups such as GIRLTALK Inc, Inspire Health Solutions LLC, and the Minority Women Professionals are MVPs Program. She has been recognized at the national and international level for her work and efforts to educate, advocate and provide healthcare to those in need. She was named Woman of the Year by the American Telemedicine Association in 2019, and received the Public Health Innovator Award from Harvard School of Public Health in 2019, as well as being named one of America's Top Family Doctors from 2007 to 2008 by the Consumers Research Council of America.
Monica Gandhi is an American physician and professor. She teaches medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is director of the UCSF Gladstone Center for AIDS Research and the medical director of the San Francisco General Hospital HIV Clinic, Ward 86. Her research considers HIV prevalence in women, as well as HIV treatment and prevention. She has been noted as a critic of some aspects of the COVID-19 lockdowns in the US.
Judith Salmon Kaur is an American oncologist who is Director of the Native American Programs in the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center. According to Indian Country Today, Kaur is one of only two Native American oncologists working in the United States.
Ligia Peralta is a Dominican-born doctor of pediatrics and adolescent medicine in Maryland. Her research focuses on HIV and the transmission of HIV in adolescents, specifically those from under-served communities.
Kameron Leigh Matthews is an American physician.
Janice E. Nevin is an executive who in 2014 became President and CEO of ChristianaCare Health System. She is the first woman to be the head of Delaware's largest hospital system.
Onye Nnorom is a Canadian physician and public health specialist. She is an assistant professor and associate program director of the public health and preventative medicine residency program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She is the Black health lead for University of Toronto's faculty of medicine, and is a former president of the Black Physicians’ Association of Ontario. Her research considers public health and health inequality for Black and other marginalized communities.
Adeiyewunmi "Ade" Osinubi is an American physician, documentary filmmaker, and writer. She is an emergency medicine Resident Physician at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and she is the producer of Black Motherhood through the Lens, a documentary film about four Black women's experiences in navigating reproductive health disparities. Due to her work in health equity and media, she has performed over 50 speaking engagements at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins, the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, and the National Birth Equity Collaborative. She has written multiple articles about health inequities for The Washington Post, Huff Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Teen Vogue, Essence, and Glamour Magazine. She has been featured in Forbes, PBS, and The Brown Daily Herald. Osinubi is the recipient of the National Minority Quality Forum 40 under 40 Leader in Health Award, the 40 under 40 Black Health Connect Award, was recognized as a 2024 Boston Celtics "Hero Among Us" and is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha and Gold Humanism medical honor societies.
The Nocturnists is an independent medical storytelling program of live performances, a podcast, and audio documentaries dedicated to humanizing healthcare workers. Founded in 2016 by Emily Silverman, an internal medicine physician at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), The Nocturnists is based in San Francisco and hosts live performances across the United States where clinicians share stories from their personal and professional lives. The Nocturnists podcast features live stories, as well as podcast documentaries and conversations with authors and art makers whose work addresses moral and cultural issues in healthcare. The Nocturnists’ mission is to “provide a safe psychological space for health care workers to express themselves in their full-fledged humanity”. Since its founding, The Nocturnists has produced over twenty live events, five podcast seasons, and five special audio documentary series.
Gladys Louise McGarey a holistic physician and medical activist, is the daughter of two medical missionaries in India. Over her career, McGarey has promoted better childbirth practices, holistic medicine, and acupuncture through her medical practice, speeches, and books. She co-founded the American Holistic Medical Association in 1978 and served as its president. She also co-founded the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine, and she served as president of the Arizona Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners.
There are women in medical philanthropy in California. California houses well-known medical research facilities, such as the University of California, San Francisco and the Stanford University School of Medicine, which require donors to support their research, and some of these donors are women. They include Lynne Benioff, Helen Diller, Hanna Gleiberman, Betty Irene Moore, and Dianne Taube.