Hospice & Palliative Care Fellowship ProgramDirectors

Tolúwalàse "Làse" Àjàyí, M.D., FAAP

Palliative Medicine Associate Physician, UCSD

Dr. Ajayi holds a joint faculty appointment at UC San Diego in the departments of pediatrics and medicine and is the program director for the joint UC San Diego and Scripps Health Palliative Medicine Fellowship program. Her translational research is housed at the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation where she serves as the digital health equity leader. She works clinically at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego as a hospitalist focusing on newborn care and as a pediatric palliative medicine physician, and at UC San Diego Health where she is an adult palliative medicine consultant.

Elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees in June 2022, Dr. Ajayi is also chair of the California Medical Association (CMA) Council on Medical Services and immediate-past president of the San Diego County Medical Society, where she was the first black woman president in the organization's 152-year history.

Dr. Ajayi's research focuses on opportunities at the intersection of novel digital medicine technologies and unmet needs in maternal fetal health as well as pain and palliative medicine. She is a member of the Pediatric Operations Task Force and on the Digital Health Technologies Committee of the All of Us Research Program with the National Institutes of Health, a member of the Palliative Care Research Cooperative, and the principal investigator for PowerMom, a research initiative investigating how mobile health can provide pregnant women with real-time, patient- reported outcomes that can be integrated rapidly into individualized clinical plans to improve health-related quality of life.

Holly Yang, M.D.

Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Scripps

Holly Yang, M.D., is a hospice and palliative medicine specialist with primary training in internal medicine. Dr. Yang strives to help patients live well by caring for the whole person.

In collaboration with other team members, she focuses on providing an extra layer of support for patients and families with consideration of their physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs, no matter the stage or prognosis of their illness. She is always looking for ways to improve care.

She enjoys teaching and her educational focus is on physician and inter-professional training in hospice and palliative medicine in the United States and internationally. She also enjoys teaching communication skills to physicians and physician trainees. In her spare time, she enjoys surfing and traveling.