One of One - Jose Beltran

Jose Beltran was the only person at his medical school who specifically applied to family medicine. Asked for his thoughts on why, Jose outlined two reasons.  First, the school is the first engineering medical school, so students' mindsets are geared more towards surgical specialties. Second, the curriculum structure had family medicine as a 20-week longitudinal clerkship before the Step 1 exam, which he feels created a perception that family medicine is what you do first before the "real stuff."

However, he cites a recent change for family medicine to a 5-week block format which means that more students are now considering family medicine. “After being with the preceptor for five weeks at a time, a lot of students are telling me, “I can kind of see myself doing this.” I think with the new environment, I think it's really opened up people to the breadth and what family medicine looks like.”

Born in Los Angeles, Jose spent eight additional years in LA after undergraduate school, working at two different companies. During that time, he obtained a master’s in public health degree before attending medical school. He is the first in his family to attend undergraduate school, obtain a master's degree, and attend medical school

He knew coming in that he wanted to do community-focused medicine after completing his MPH. During medical school, he discovered he loved everything except dialysis - including surgery, pediatrics, psychiatry, and OB-GYN. Family medicine made the most sense as the easiest path to community medicine while being able to do a breadth of things like substance abuse treatment, teenage pregnancies, and working in free clinics.

When we last saw him, Jose was an AAFP Emerging Leaders Scholar -whose project in Personal and Practice Leadership was selected to be a featured poster presentation at 2025 AAFP FUTURE conference.

How did the Emerging Leader Institute opportunity help propel you in your medical school journey?
Jose: I think it highlighted the amount of clout, or authority I had, even as a medical student.  With the skills I have now, when I go into residency, I don't feel like I'm gonna start over.  I'm already established as a person, as a leader, as a community person, I can just get started running.

Asked why he ultimately chose the Harbor-UCLA Family Medicine Residency program, Jose says UCLA Harbor was actually his number 2 choice initially, but he kept switching between it and his number 1 every day during ranking. “When I matched at UCLA Harbor, I realized it was always number one. I wanted to return to Los Angeles for urban community inner-city medicine. The program is at a county hospital, very community-focused, which aligns with my goals and it's close to family.” Now at age 36, he needs and wants to be close to his family.

Future Plans

With his MPH experience, medical training, and entrepreneurial spirit, he envisions establishing a practice that meets his vision.  “It's gonna be some kind of business or something that maybe has to be funded through grants, potentially. In my head right now, it seems easy to just say, like, a free clinic. We're trained to be physician innovators, so what can be a different avenue to do that? I don't know what that is yet. Through residency, as I get to be more involved in the community, I'll identify those needs and maybe I can solve this with some kind of innovation or some kind of process change.”

What advice does he have for Carle's class of 2027?
He advises students to identify what they really want in their practice and future, not just the title of being a doctor or specialist. He emphasizes understanding what aspects of practice they prefer: continuity of care, inpatient vs. outpatient, research, education, patient acuity levels, and flexibility. He advises against choosing a practice based on a perception of work-life balance “because it doesn't exist in medicine - it's just work and life that you figure out. Missing holidays, birthdays, and important events will happen regardless of specialty. If you work in a practice you enjoy, even if you work more, you'll get more out of it.”

Do you think having an MPH degree and years of other life experiences gave you more clarity in making decisions?
“Absolutely, 100 percent that my life experience helped me maintain perspective throughout medical school. This is basically my 3rd career, having all that life experience, and being married puts things in perspective. My priorities are going back home and a career where I will be useful in helping the community. My wife, Leah, and I had a discussion almost every day, about how life is gonna be for us. There are gonna be some really bad days and there's gonna be a lot of good days. And having all those things in perspective really did help me choose a specialty.”