Efren Bose PharmD

Efren Bose has been a Lecturer faculty with SF State AAS since his first appointment in 2000, teaching Asian American History and Asian American Culture. Currently Bose teaches Asian American Community Health Issues.

Bose received his doctor of pharmacy degree from UCSF in 2013, where his capstone project was looking at the lived experiences of working class people of color living with HIV/AIDS and how their treatment regimens to control their HIV have changed their lives.

Bose is currently the pharmacy director for University Health Service Pharmacy at UC Berkeley, where he oversees all pharmaceutical services for the entire UC Berkeley campus, including sports medicine, optometry and the various clinics within the University Health Services, including primary care, acute care and specialty care. Bose is part of the Trans Leadership Team, a group of cis, trans and gender nonbinary providers looking to improve health care for trans and gender nonbinary patients. He helped lead the COVID-19 vaccination drive at UC Berkeley along with Travel and Allergy, providing logistical and clinical support to thousands of students, faculty and staff. Bose also was part of the team to help implement medication abortion on demand at UC Berkeley.

He is also a volunteer clinical faculty at UCSF School of Pharmacy and Touro University California (Vallejo) College of Pharmacy, where he teaches clinical pharmacy classes and supervise final year students on their clinical rotations in both community/retail/outpatient pharmacy and ambulatory care pharmacy. He also precepts pharmacy, medical, dental and physical therapy students as part of Mabuhay Health Center, a free student-run clinic targeting the Filipinx and Filipinx American communities in San Francisco’s SoMa district. 

• Pharm.D University of California, San Francisco, 2013
• MA Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1998
• BA Ethnic Studies and Chemistry, University of California, Riverside, 1995

Health disparities, HIV/AIDS, Chronic disease management, Sociology of medicine, Professional development of medical professionals of color

Efren Bose conducts research on the professional development of student and newly licensed pharmacists of color. He is also interested in health disparities experienced by different minority communities, including LGBTQ+, Asian Americans, people of color, women, etc.

• Cameron Heshmati, Carolina Ryklansky, Jennifer Cocohoba, and Efren Bose. “Career Decisions Made by Pharmacists Influenced by Past Participation in the Mabuhay Health Center (MHC), a Student-run Free Clinic.” Unpublished Capstone Project, UCSF School of Pharmacy, 2020.
• Discussant, Panel: American and Filipino Health: Three Trans-Pacific Perspectives over Time; Association for Asian American Studies National Conference, San Francisco, 2014.