Our Story

Established in Fall 2019

The idea for Pride Health Alliance was born in 2017 by pharmacy student and founder Michael McClain, with the help of his fellow colleagues David Carranza, Kristen Lau, Bradley Ramos, Jenny Truong, Hana Lee, and Dr. Erica Barr at Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy. Back then, PHA was initially called the "LGBTQIA Health Awareness Committee" and was planned to be a pharmacy-only committee. Then came 2018, and some of the board members were off to Pharmacy APPE rotations, so Anna Cheng, Harjeet Gill, Sierra Kanetake, and Linda Le came on board to further help build the organization. The name changed to "Rainbow Care Committee" and the members once again tried to get the committee made.  Over the years and through the previous board's hard work, PHA was officially established as a Resident Student Organization under University of the Pacific's main campus and changed its name to "Pride Health Alliance" in the fall 2019. PHA hopes to bring LGBTQ+ education to the health major curriculum, with hopes of uniting all the different health majors at University of the Pacific.