The Imported Doctors of Kern County, California
This story was produced in collaboration with the Bakersfield Observer as part of the 2026 Ethnic Media Collaborative, Healing California.
Dr. Ololade Oladimeji and her team pose at Peridot Health Medical clinic in McFarland, which Oladimeji opened just a year ago. "Patients are grateful to have us here."
Courtesy of Dr. Oladimeji
"Kern County chose me," said Dr. Ololade Oladimeji. "I did not exactly choose Kern County."
Known as Dr. Lola, Oladimeji is a Nigerian-born internist who trained at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Ogbomoso. She came to Bakersfield in 2012 when her husband's oil and gas job relocated them from Texas. She has not left.
A year ago, she opened Peridot Health Medical Clinic, a primary care clinic in McFarland, a small, largely farmworker community north of Bakersfield, because so few clinics and providers served the area. "Patients are grateful to have us here and are happy to have more choices in their location and not having to travel to Bakersfield for their primary care needs,” she said.
Her patients travel from nearby Delano, Wasco, Shafter, Lost Hills, and even from outside Kern County — distances that pale in comparison to the roughly 12,000 miles Oladimeji traveled from Nigeria to serve them.
Dr. Ololade Oladimeji, known as "Dr. Lola," runs Peridot Health Medical clinic in McFarland, serving a largely rural, farmworking community.
Courtesy of Dr. Oladimeji
Oladimeji’s story of arriving in Kern County by circumstance and staying by conviction is far from unusual. The county’s healthcare system has long depended on doctors trained abroad.
But recent decisions coming out of Washington, D.C., brought home the extent of Kern County’s dependence on foreign-trained talent and exposed the county’s vulnerability.
On January 1, the Trump administration imposed a 39-country travel ban, followed by a freeze on immigrant visas from 75 countries. Both actions threatened work permits, visa extensions, and green card processing for foreign-trained medical professionals already in the country.
While the visa ban was quietly lifted in May, local practitioners and local hospitals and clinics are still wrestling with how they can protect this vital pipeline and the community that depends upon it. Oladimeji said these kinds of visa restrictions will worsen the doctor shortage problem.
The federal flip-flopping on visas exposed the county’s dependence on foreign-trained talent.
A Physician Desert
“We’re definitely in a physician desert,” said Dr. Terrance McGill, a family medicine physician born in Bakersfield who attended medical school at Ross University in the Caribbean.
The shortage McGill describes has roots that go back nearly five decades. On March 5, 1978, the federal government formally designated Kern County a Health Professional Shortage Area for primary care. That designation has never been lifted. Today, Kern County has 41 primary care physicians per 100,000 residents — it ranks in the bottom third among California's 57 counties — and well below the state average of 61 per 100,000.
McGill said he returned home in part because “we needed people who looked like me.” He now serves patients in Kern County and runs Maverick Medical Care, his private practice. More than 60% of Kern County's physicians come from medical schools abroad, according to data from the Medical Board of California.
Dr. Terrance McGill is a Bakersfield native who attended medical school at Ross University in the Caribbean before opening his private practice in Kern County, Maverick Medical care. Here he is pictured with his wife and three children.
Courtesy of Dr. McGill
"Bakersfield and Kern County is one of the hardest places to recruit to," Oladimeji said, recalling her experience as a physician recruiter at Adventist Health Bakersfield. There are locations that boast better weather and amenities, she said. "Most U.S.-born, U.S.-trained doctors are not attracted to a place like Bakersfield.”
McGill, the native Bakersfield doctor who attended medical school abroad, agreed that domestic graduates have a fuller roster of choices around the state and nation, including coastal hospitals with higher salaries and cleaner air; Kern County’s air quality ranks among the nation’s worst.
Oladimeji said that underserved areas like Kern mean higher patient volume. Lower socioeconomic and educational backgrounds can shape patients’ health outcomes, she said, contributing to higher disease rates, lower insurance reimbursement, and lower physician compensation. These factors impact recruitment. “We had to rely on foreign medical graduates, usually requiring visa sponsorships. That has been a way of getting physicians here."
Kern County has backfilled its chronic physician shortage with foreign-born and foreign-trained doctors for decades. For those who do come to Kern County from abroad, they often arrive on J-1 or H-1B visas that are tied to sponsoring institutions. Foreign-born physicians face a narrower set of work options and so they remain.
"After residency, usually they stay about two years, and then they find that Kern County is not a bad place to be," McGill said. "Because they're already moving from different countries, it's easy for them to set their roots here. They're not born in LA or San Francisco and trying to get back."
Threats to the Pipeline
One of the pipelines routing these physicians into Kern County runs through Niles Street in East Bakersfield—the Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency Program, operated by Clinica Sierra Vista.
Dr. Hector Arreaza, a Venezuelan-born and educated physician was among Rio Bravo's Family Medicine Residency Program's first residents—now teaches there.
Cecil Egbele
The primary purpose of the program is to train and retain family medicine residents and physicians dedicated to serving the underserved in Kern and Fresno Counties. The program receives roughly 1,600 applications each year, a mix of citizens and foreign-born physicians, for 10 spots.
Dr. Hector Arreaza, a Venezuelan-born and educated physician who was among the 12-year-old program's first residents, now teaches there. "Before this program, all these communities around this clinic that were underserved had no place to go for primary care," he said. Residents see patients in the clinic and also go to hospitals, attend health fairs, and run a street medicine program for Bakersfield's homeless population.
"They are caring for the whole community," Arreaza said. "The activities are not limited to the walls of the clinic."
This whole community care model was threatened under the recent visa freeze.
During that time, McGill heard fear from his peers, "almost anger," he said, because those imported doctors know "how much they've benefited the system. Everyone needs help, but you're blocking off that pipeline to bring people over to assist."
The Trump administration quietly lifted the freeze in May. But the unease remains.
Oladimeji said that if such a policy returned, "it will definitely limit the availability, recruitment, and retention of physicians to Kern County. ”
The county is not without other new efforts to address physician shortages, especially through residency programs. Rio Bravo. Bakersfield Memorial Hospital recently launched a residency program in partnership with Morehouse School of Medicine, a historically Black medical school with a mission of training physicians for underserved communities The program’s second cohort arrives this July.
For now, Kern County’s health system still relies heavily on foreign-born physicians committed to practicing in the region.
"I see a lot of opportunities to directly impact people's lives and health in these kinds of communities," Oladimeji said. "This resonates with my purpose."