Toluwalase A. Ajayi, MD

Toluwalasé “Lasé” Ajayi, MD, is a community pediatrician, adult and pediatric palliative medicine physician, and clinical translational researcher. Elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees in June 2022, Dr. Ajayi is also chair of the California Medical Association (CMA) Council on Medical Services and president of the San Diego County Medical Society, where she is the first black woman president in the organization’s 152-year history.

Dr. Ajayi immigrated to the U.S. as a political refugee from Nigeria when she was seven and grew up in Lawrence, Kan. She completed medical school at the University of Kansas and a pediatric residency at the University of Kansas Medical Center prior to training in adult and pediatric palliative medicine at the Institute for Palliative Medicine at San Diego Hospice.

Dr. Ajayi is currently an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Diego and Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego where she works as a hospitalist and pediatric palliative medicine physician. She is also the co-medical director of adult palliative medicine at Scripps Mercy Hospital San Diego and serves as the director of diversity initiatives, the director of clinical research, and as an assistant professor of molecular medicine and senior staff scientist in digital medicine at the Scripps Research Translational Institute.

A former chair of both the AMA Young Physician Section and the CMA Young Physician Section, Dr. Ajayi’s long history of leadership in organized medicine and policymaking extends to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), including serving as an AAP delegate to the AMA House of Delegates and advocating for the needs of children, especially those with serious illness.

Dr. Ajayi’s research currently focuses on opportunities at the intersection of novel digital medicine technologies and unmet needs in maternal fetal health as well as pain and palliative medicine. She is a member of the Pediatric Operations Task Force and on the Digital Health Technologies Committee of the All of Us Research Program with the National Institutes of Health, a member of the Palliative Care Research Cooperative, and the principal investigator for PowerMom, a research initiative investigating how mobile health can provide pregnant women with real-time, patient-reported outcomes that can be integrated rapidly into individualized clinical plans to improve health-related quality of life.

Dr. Ajayi lives in San Diego with her partner, Kyle Edmonds, MD, and their three children, Ayokárí, Tiwalolá and Palmer.

2022–2023

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