San Francisco ob-gyn Pratima Gupta, M.D., was selected as the 2017 recipient of the California Medical Association (CMA) Compassionate Service Award, which honors a CMA member physician who best illustrates the association’s commitment to community and charity care. The award was presented at the CMA Foundation’s President’s Reception and Awards Gala on October 21, 2017, in Anaheim.

Throughout Dr. Gupta’s medical career, she has shown an unwavering commitment to public health and community service. She spent a research year during medical school in Quito, Ecuador. During that year, she founded and staffed a free clinic for transgender health care. From 2006 to 2014, she travelled internationally as a volunteer, providing training and education to doctors and health care providers in Peru, India, Zambia, Nigeria, Uganda, Nicaragua and South Sudan. In 2013, she participated on a disaster relief team sent to typhoon-stricken Tacloban, Philippines.

Her volunteer work in California is equally impressive. Since 2005, she has volunteered her time to provide care to female, transgender and male sex workers at St. James Infirmary in San Francisco, where she is currently the volunteer medical director. 

Dr. Gupta is a fierce proponent of patient reproductive rights, and is known for encouraging other physicians in California and throughout the United States to become advocates for their patients, public health and the practice of medicine.

"I am [an] abortion provider who is pro-life. By that, I mean that my work as an obstetrician/gynecologist in the Bay Area is conducted in service of women’s lives, not just those of their unborn children," Dr. Gupta wrote in an op-ed earlier this year. "I provide care with respect, compassion, and dignity, whether my patient needs an abortion or prenatal care, a cancer screening, or if she’s in labor. When I say I’m 'pro-life,' I mean that the literal sense of the word 'life,' not the way it's been twisted by anti-choice advocates who want to shame, punish, and control women, their bodies, and their choices."

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