René Bravo, M.D., is the president-elect of the California Medical Association. Dr. Bravo is a primary care pediatrician who has been serving families and children on the Central Coast for 38 years. He is the founder and President of Bravo Pediatrics, a 5-physician single specialty group practice where he is the managing partner. He has also been active medical staff at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center (now Adventist Health) in San Luis Obispo since 1986. He is the past Chair of the Board of Directors at Cencal Health (Medi-Cal County organized health system) for San Luis Obispo (SLO) and Santa Barbara Counties.
At CMA, he has served on the Board of CALPAC and the CMA Foundation Board (now Physicians for a Healthy California), in addition to serving as District V Trustee on the CMA Board. He has served as the Chair of the Pharmacy and Therapeutics TAC, the Governance TAC, the Restorative Justice TAC and the Fast Action Committee responding to the Office of Health Care Affordability (OCHA). A longtime delegate to the CMA House of Delegates, he has Chaired Reference Committee B for past House of Delegates.
Dr. Bravo is past president of San Luis Obispo County Medical Society, where he also served on its Governing Board and chaired the Physician Wellness Committee for 10 years. He has served for 20 years at The United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) spending a decade on the Board of Trustees in Rockville, Maryland and as President of USP Convention (2007-2010). Past associations have been on the Physicians Advisory (corporate) Boards of Blue Shield, California and Lifeguard HMO (San Jose). He is a past Commissioner of the SLO County First Five Commission, as well as being appointed to serve on the initial California Medi-Cal Drug Use Review Board by the California Department of Health Care Services. Additionally, he helped found the Children’s Health Initiative of SLO County, bringing health insurance to all children in the region.
A graduate of UCSF School of Medicine (’83), Dr. Bravo did his pediatric residency at Stanford University Medical Center. Of particular and unique note, he ran for the State Assembly in one of CMA’s first attempts to elevate physician voices to the State Legislature (1998, R-33rd AD).