Bio
Dale O’Brien, MD, MPH is adjunct faculty at the Stanford University School of Medicine in the Primary Care and Population Health Division. He founded several medical clinics for vulnerable populations in under-resourced areas of northern California where he has been a practicing physician for more than four decades.
A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Medicine, he took postgraduate training at the Oregon Health & Science University, and the University of California (San Francisco) / University of California School of Public Health. He is board certified by the American Board of Family Medicine and by the American Board of Preventive Medicine.
Dr. O'Brien treated hippies at the White Bird Clinic in Eugene, Oregon in the mid-70s; served as the acting Health Officer of the Shasta County Health Department in California; and spent two years in the early 80s as an affiliate of the European Branch Headquarters of the World Health Organization in Denmark.
As the Executive Director of the nonprofit Cancer Patients Alliance (CPA) since 2001, Dr. O’Brien and his team have advocated for and supported low-income Latinx community members, immigrants and farm workers with cancer in the Salinas Valley agricultural region of Monterey County, California.
Dr. O’Brien was Co-Principal Investigator of the Stanford Cancer Institute's Developmental Research Award in Translational Science, "Building an Academic-Community Partnership to Understand and Address Barriers to Cancer Care in the Salinas Valley Region of Monterey County," 2010 – 2015.
CPA has trained a number of Stanford University medical and post-doctoral students on behalf of the Valley Fellowship Program beginning in 2010 until the present.
Dr. O'Brien was a member of the Stanford / Medable team that developed the cancer aftercare app called TOGETHERCare - per NIH / NCI (SBIR 363) Phase 1 and 2 grants from 9/18/2017 until 9/30/2022.
Dr. O’Brien was on the Stanford-based research team in 2018 that piloted and studied the efficacy of the “Healthkey” behavioral health app for SAMHSA, CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.
Beginning 2019, he was Co-Principal Investigator with the Stanford University group that has helped reduce cancer disparities by increasing access to the emerging DNA technologies - and facilitating cultural translation in Monterey County - pursuant to 4-year support from the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine.
In 2021, CPA received a 5-year grant award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to further their advocacy work with the Latinx community and farm workers with cancer in the Salinas Valley.
In June 2021, CPA was selected by the California GOTV medical academic consortium including the Stanford University School of Medicine as led by UCLA - to conduct the "Get Out the Vaccine to Stop Covid-19" initiative for low-income populations in Monterey County, California.
Since 2016 Dr. O'Brien has been on the Institutional Review Board of Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas. He is currently a member of the Stanford Cancer Institute Community Advisory Board. Dr. O’Brien is a past editor of the Berkeley Wellness Letter, Medicine on the Net and Cancer Informatics.
