Raynald Samoa, MD

Dr. Raynald Samoa is an endocrinologist and associate professor in the department of diabetes, endocrinology, and metabolism at City of Hope. Throughout his career he has championed health equity, in particular using evidence to advise lawmakers on the unique health needs of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPI).

As a co-founder of the Pacific Islander COVID-19 Response Team (PICRT) with Dr. Nia Aitaoto, Samoa addressed the U.S. House of Representatives to report on the disproportionate burden communities of color faced during the pandemic. Some of the data he presented came from working with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR).

Samoa had suggested a few graduate students to work with UCLA CHPR Director Ninez A. Ponce, PhD, MPP, to scrape data on COVID-19 cases and death rates among NHPIs across the country. This was start of the CHPR's NHPI Data Policy Lab.

“My hope is that the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research continues to improve the capacity of NHPI communities to dismantle the systemic barriers to their equity and inclusion such as the reporting of relevant, disaggregated, accurate, and trustworthy data points that can inform policy development for the betterment of the lives of NHPI,” says Samoa.

Currently, Dr. Samoa serves on the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian American, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders and is the co-chair of the Data Disaggregation and Education Subcommittee.

Samoa provides technical assistance for the Data and Research Workgroup of the Queer & Trans Pacific Islanders (QTPI) Village. He also teaches gender affirming care to physicians as faculty in the City of Hope Endocrine Fellowship Program and to providers in the only QTPI Centered Community Health Clinic in the U.S., the Mapu Maia Clinic.

In 2022, he received the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award for Health Equity.