AAMC selects UB medical student for its national ACE Award for Advocacy, Collaboration and Education

BUFFALO, N.Y. — David Cazares Dorantes, a second-year medical student in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, has been selected as one of five recipients of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) 2025 ACE Award for Advocacy, Collaboration and Education.

The award recognizes academic medicine champions who are honored for leading and collaborating with the nation’s medical schools and academic health systems to improve the health of patients, families and communities nationwide.

A reception will be held in Washington, D.C., later this month.

“Even so early in his career, David is absolutely committed to putting patients first,” says Allison Brashear, MD, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School, “whether that means being boots on the ground to help unhoused people get care, translating English to Spanish, or serving in our student-run free clinic. With this award, the AAMC is recognizing the powerful, positive impact his advocacy is having on our community.” 

The AAMC cited Dorantes’ work at the Good News Clinics in Georgia and as a Spanish medical interpreter, experiences that reflect his commitment to serving vulnerable communities.

He is assistant program manager for UB HEALS, the Jacobs School’s student-run street medicine initiative, and he serves as class representative for Polity, the student government organization. In Buffalo, he works at Jewish Family Services on refugee resettlement. A member of the American Medical Association’s Medical Student Section Committee on Civil Rights, Dorantes is also the UB representative for the Latino Medical Student Association.

He plans to pursue family medicine, aiming to deliver comprehensive primary care that helps patients manage their health. His goal is to prevent undiagnosed chronic illnesses from progressing to the point where they require emergency department visits.

Dorantes, who came to the U.S. from Mexico at the age of 6, says he takes absolutely nothing for granted. He says there have been multiple times in his life when things looked hopeless, but good people stepped in to help. Those experiences left him with an unwavering sense of responsibility to help improve similar circumstances for others. “When you watch your parents sacrifice so much, there’s no way I can see those sacrifices and not do everything I can to help my neighbor,” he says.

He mentors college and high school students interested in medicine and advocates for marginalized communities.

$95,000 hospital bill and a bucket of coins

When Dorantes was in high school, college didn’t even seem possible. During his senior year, he sometimes skipped class because he was working two jobs. His parents worked minimum-wage jobs but then his mother, who was uninsured, needed emergency surgery. “I was staring at a $95,000 hospital bill,” he says. “I thought, ‘Ok, I’ll just work for the rest of my life to pay it off.’ But the hospital could provide financial assistance if you were under the poverty limit. That’s where things turned for me.”

He saw how the hospital’s Spanish interpreters helped his mother understand what she was going through. It inspired him to get a job after high school, working as an interpreter in the emergency department.

“I started taking classes, too,” he says. “For my first semester, I didn’t have enough saved up, so I took our bucket of coins that we had been saving for a few years and deposited it at the bank. That’s how I paid my first tuition bill.”

Despite these challenges, Dorantes wasn’t deterred. In his sophomore year, he applied for the Golden Door Scholarship and was granted a full ride to Franklin & Marshall College.

“That was another inflection point,” he says. “It really was a dream come true.”

And in his classes, he began to understand the reasons behind the challenges his family faced. “I had seen people suffer because of disparities in the social determinants of health but I hadn’t really understood what I was seeing,” he says. “But when I took classes on race, public health and sociology, I understood why minorities struggle at a greater rate.”

‘People in my corner’

Those courses further fueled his interest in medical school — another challenge — but Dorantes had plenty of support.

“I had an adviser in college who sat me down with another mentor and professor of mine and said, ‘We’re going to get you to medical school.’ That level of support is not common. I felt like there were always people in my corner, people who wanted to see me succeed, who believed in me. When you have good people in your corner, it’s your job to pay it forward.”

Choosing UB was an easy decision. “UB has a really big presence in the community and that’s huge for me,” says Dorantes. “The Jacobs School has provided me the resources to pursue my advocacy work and my need to serve the community that I live in. I think the school is really good at that, giving us avenues to serve others and not be alienated from the people we care for.”