Folasade (Fola) May, MD, PhD, MPhil

Dr. May is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and a staff physician in Gastroenterology in the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.

She leads a health services research team at UCLA that focuses on cancer prevention and control research. In addition, she is currently the Director of Quality Improvement in Gastroenterology at UCLA Health. Dr. May completed her undergraduate degree at Yale University and then attended the University of Cambridge (UK) to obtain a Masters in Epidemiology. She completed medical school at Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining UCLA Health in 2011.

At UCLA, she joined the UCLA Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) Program, where she completed her gastroenterology fellowship and a PhD in Health Policy and Management from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Currently, she is involved in research and public health efforts to improve colon cancer awareness and colon cancer screening in the U.S population at large, and especially in underserved populations where screening rates are lowest. These efforts include work at UCLA Health, in Federally Qualified Health Centers, and in the VA.  

Her team also focuses on developing interventions to improve diagnostic follow-up for patients with abnormal colorectal cancer screening results. She is passionate about improving colon cancer awareness and colon cancer screening and is involved in several organizations that aim to help eliminate the disease.