Dr. Aisha Mays

Bay Area native, Dr. Aisha Mays is a locally and nationally recognized innovative, adolescent physician leader, author, professor and researcher. Her work is dedicated to uplifting youth who have been made most vulnerable by our society with a particular focus on Black girls, Black young mothers, youth impacted by sex trafficking, and gender-expansive youth. Dr. Mays has spent her entire career caring for youth in the Bay Area and New York City including serving as the Medical Director of the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center health clinic,  physician within the Oakland Unified School District School Based Health Centers, and academic faculty in the Mt. Sinai and University of California San Francisco School’s of Medicine. 

Dr. Mays was inspired to start Dream Youth Clinic in 2017 because she noticed that there was a lack of true youth-led and youth-designed health services in the community and that Black and Brown youth who had been made vulnerable by society were still experiencing stark inequities when accessing the healthcare system. 

Dr. Mays is passionate about centering reproductive justice in healthcare for youth, through supporting and advocating for youth to receive empowering, accessible, youth-centered healthcare services, by providing resources to address barriers to healthcare and through advocating for system-level policy change. 

She is a national expert and leader in the fields of youth and childhood sex trafficking and reframing the narrative of young motherhood and she conducts research, develops programming and trainings, authors works, gives talks and sits on local and national committees on child sex trafficking and centering reproductive justice for young mothers.

Dr. Mays also believes in the power of social media to serve as positive health tool for youth and is an avid youth health content creator. 

Her work has been featured in media outlets nationwide including: The Oaklandside, Represent Collaborative,  The Black Truth Project, KALW State of the Bay, The San Francisco Chronicle, and MsMagazine.

Dr. Mays is most inspired by the power and self-determination of young people. 

DR. MAYS IN THE NEWS