Roots in the work

I'm Andrew Dossman — an MD/MBA candidate at UCLA on my way into family medicine, building toward a community-based primary care practice rooted in the place that raised me: Long Beach and South LA.

Everything I do traces back home. I come from this community, and I want to serve it — not from a distance, but from inside it. The people here taught me that care isn't only clinical; it's relational, spiritual, and personal.

Medicine gave me the science. The MBA gave me the systems. Faith gives me the why. I'm most interested in where all three meet — where good care is also reachable care, and where someone's first step toward help doesn't have to be the hardest part.

My faith isn't separate from this work; it's the root of it. I write about that intersection — faith, medicine, and becoming — in my newsletter, The Circle. And through Empowered by Grace, the nonprofit I founded, I'm working to turn that conviction into something tangible for my community.

Right now I'm building a low-burden guide to help people find a therapist — because too many who need care never make it past "I've been thinking about it." I want to be the trusted voice that walks them to the door.

I'm still early in all of it — studying, learning, building. But the direction is clear: care that meets people where they are, for the people who need it most.