Director of Quality Education
Al’ai Alvarez, MD (@alvarezzzy) is a national leader and educator on wellness, diversity, equity, and Inclusion. He is a member of the inaugural cohort of ambassadors for CCARE’s Applied Compassion Training and has successfully completed various other programs, including the Compassion Cultivation Training and Awakening Humanity at Work.
• Clinical Associate Professor, Stanford Emergency Medicine (EM)
• Director of Well-Being, Stanford EM
• Co-lead, the Human Potential Team, Stanford EM
• Fellowship Director, Physician Wellness Fellowship, Stanford EM
• Chair, Physician Wellness Forum, Stanford WellMD/WellPhD
• Director, Physician Resource Network (PRN) Support Program, Stanford WellMD/WellPhD [Stanford’s peer-to-peer support for faculty and trainees]
His work focuses on humanizing physician roles as individuals and teams by harnessing the individual human potential in the context of high-performance teams. This includes optimizing the interconnectedness between Process Improvement (Quality and Clinical Operations), Recruitment (Diversity), and Well-being (Inclusion). He is one of the 2021-2022 Faculty Fellows at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign.
Dr. Alvarez was the assistant/associate residency program director (APD) at the Stanford Emergency Medicine Residency Program [2016-2021], focusing on the intersectionality of residency well-being with performance improvement on patient experience, quality and patient safety, diversity, equity and inclusion, and medical education. Dr. Alvarez co-founded and co-chaired the largest diversity mentoring initiative in Emergency Medicine through ACEP and EMRA.
Dr. Alvarez gives several grand rounds and national/international conference lectures and workshops on relevant topics in self-compassion, physician well-being, and high-performance teams, including increasing leadership capacity and mentorship to enhance diversity and inclusion.
Dr. Alvarez received the 2019 ACEP DIHE Distance and Impact Award, the 2020 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) Academy for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Medicine (ADIEM) Outstanding Academician Award, the 2020 CORD Academy for Scholarship in Education in EM Academy Member Award on Teaching and Evaluation, the 2022 John Levin Leadership Award at Stanford Health Care, and the 2024 Physician Leader of the Year of the Sharp Index Awards.