Donaldo (Don) M. Hernandez, MD, FACP, is the immediate past president of the California Medical Association. He is an Internist in full-time, hospital-based practice in Santa Cruz County and has been a member of the active medical staffs at all of the county’s hospitals. He is a Shareholder in the Palo Alto Foundation Medical Group and serves as a CMA Trustee for the geographically and ethnically diverse District 7 which includes Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Santa Clara, and San Mateo Counties. He currently chairs the CMA Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee.

Raised in a bicultural/bilingual household, he came to the Monterey Bay at the conclusion of his Fellowships, joining a small practice in order to serve the largely Latin communities in Salinas and the Salinas Valley. There, he was on staff at Salinas Valley Memorial and Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula where he served as the Medical Director for Hospice of the Central Coast. He chaired several committees at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital.

He returned to Hospital Medicine at the Santa Cruz Medical Clinic (now merged into the Palo Alto Medical Foundation) when they were inaugurating their Hospital Medicine program, now considered one of the highest quality Hospital Medicine programs in Central and Northern California and is one of longest-serving Hospitalists in the Monterey Bay Area.

Dr. Hernandez has been a member of the Santa Cruz County Medical Society and the CMA since 2003. He was first named to the CMA House of Delegates from Santa Cruz in 2007. He was elected to two terms as President of SCCMS from 2009 to 2011 during which SCCMS initiated several distinguished community health projects most notably programs to combat childhood obesity, substance use disorder treatment, and behavioral health access issues. He was elected to his current role on the CMA Board of Trustees for District 7 in 2011. He was appointed to the Diversity Technical Advisory Committee and has served as its Chair since 2016. He is also a member of the Ethnic Medical Organizations Section.