Dr. Jann Murray-García to Receive the Alma Dea Morani Award
The Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation honors pioneer in cultural humility training in academic medicine
Dr. Murray-García, a pediatrician, Health Sciences Clinical Professor Emerita at the UC Davis Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, and co-founder of the internationally recognized term “Cultural Humility,” is the 2026 recipient of the Alma Dea Morani, MD Renaissance Woman Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation.
In the late 1990s Dr. Jann Murray-García and Dr. Melanie Tervalon introduced Cultural Humility. Challenging the limitations of the traditional Cultural Competence model, which treats cultural understanding as a skill that can be mastered through acquired knowledge, Cultural Humility emphasizes lifelong learning and self-reflection, recognition of power imbalances, honoring the expertise that resides in communities, and a commitment to institutional accountability.
Dr. Murray-García is widely published in the health sciences literature, including in the New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics, Academic Medicine, and Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. She has spoken extensively at regional, national, and international events, sharing this concept. Dr. Murray-García has co-written a textbook on the concept of Cultural Humility which will be released in the coming months.
Murray-García received her BA in Human Biology with Honors and with Distinction from Stanford University, her MD from UC San Francisco, and completed pediatric residency training at Oakland Children’s Hospital, followed by an MPH from UC Berkeley.
For more than a decade she has implemented several highly regarded immersive programs at UC Davis Health which bring together multigenerational and multidisciplinary groups of students, faculty, administrators, staff, and community members from across the health professions. These unique experiences include the three-day Anti-Racism and Cultural Humility (ARC) Training Program, the four-week Summer Institute on Race and Health, and the Interprofessional Central Valley Road Trip, the latter exploring the histories, diversity, and contemporary population health challenges of this regionally distinct area. Dr. Murray-García’s specific interests in pediatrics reflect the impact of racially disparate schooling experiences on the healthy racial development of all children
Deeply engaged in her Davis, California community, Dr. Murray-García has been a prominent advocate on issues of educational equity, police-community relations, and responses to hate crimes and bias incidents. Although the city of Davis is often celebrated as a progressive community with a high-achieving school district, significant racial disparities in educational outcomes and discipline persist. She produced an award-winning documentary (free on YouTube and funded in part by Teaching Tolerance), From The Community To The Classroom, A Youth-Directed Documentary About How Davis Young People Led Their Community Closer to Educational Equity. The film depicts how students learn and live race and racism in Davis.
As a potent community activist strategy, Dr. Murray-García served as a columnist for the Davis Enterprise for 15 years. Integrating research data with storytelling, her column addressed parenting for social justice and local manifestations of our nation’s ongoing challenges in race relations. In 2021, the City of Davis awarded her its CA Covell Citizen of the Year Award for Lifetime Achievement in Volunteering.
The Foundation will present the Alma Dea Morani, MD Renaissance Woman Award to Dr. Murray-García this fall at a free virtual event hosted by the New York Academy of Medicine on November 5th, 2026, at 4:00pm ET.
The ceremony will feature a talk by Dr. Murray-García entitled “Cultural Humility: Interrupting Scripts of Inequality”
The Alma Dea Morani, MD Renaissance Woman Award
Every year, the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation bestows the Alma Dea Morani, MD Renaissance Woman Award on a truly exceptional woman. The Foundation’s premier honor is awarded to a woman physician or scientist who has left a significant mark on history and pivotally advanced the future.
We cordially invite you to join the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation and the New York Academy of Medicine as we virtually fete Dr. Murray-García and her extraordinary accomplishments on November 5, 2026, at 4:00pm ET.