Part 4: How Did Latino Physicians Accomplish the Lofty Achievement as a Political Force?
Building networks has been the aim and creative force from two slightly different workforces. Geographically, their roots are bicoastal, with Mexican American, Chicano, and Central American physicians in the West, and physicians of Puerto Rican / Cuban, Caribbean, and South American prominence prominent on the East Coast.
For the former, the West, Dr. Elena Rios has been on the forefront of organizing her colleagues. I can proudly say that I went to medical school with Rios at UCLA DGSOM. Even while in medical school, she was enmeshed in policy and making a difference politically with her activism. In 1987, Rios received her Doctor of Medicine degree from DGSOM, and then went on to residencies in internal medicine at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and White Memorial Medical Center. In 1989, Dr. Rios founded the National Network of Latin American Medical Students Association. A year later, she returned to the University of California for a fellowship in primary care health services research.
From the very beginning of her training in medicine, Dr. Elena Rios has worked to improve the recruitment and success rates of minority students in United States medical schools. After graduation she turned her voluntary work with individual students into a large-scale national effort, by co-founding the National Network of Latin American Medical Students. Since then, she has held a series of appointments in California programs designed to improve educational and career opportunities for minorities in the health professions, and in 1998 Dr. Rios was appointed president of the National Hispanic Medical Association.( an organization she helped found in 1994) and CEO of Hispanic-Serving Health Professional School, Incorporated.
Dr. Rios has received an array of awards, including the American Association of Indian Physicians Appreciation Award in 1995 and the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health Award in 1998. She was named one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics of the Nation by Hispanic Business Magazine in 2001 and received the American Public Health Association’ s Latino Caucus Distinguished Career Award the same year.
Likewise in the Eastern part of the country, Judith Flores, MD, has been working extremely hard for Latino Physicians to get to know each other. When she is not building and strengthening networks to support Hispanic physicians, Dr. Flores is working to promote
Dr. Judith Flores
population health and lower health inequities— especially those worsened by access, language, and culture.
As the National Hispanic Medical Association( NHMA) representative on the AMA Minority Affairs Section’ s governing council, Dr. Flores was a longtime member of the NHMA board, serving as is a past chairperson of the executive Board of Directors. With a goal of achieving optimal health for all, the AMA is confronting inequity at the system and community level to bring health equity to marginalized and predominantly ethnic minority communities. She now chairs the AMA’ s New York City chapter.
Judith Flores graduated from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1976. She specialized in pediatrics and was a resident at New York’ s Montefiore Hospital. From 1979 to 1981 she was a clinical instructor for the New York Medical College Department of Pediatrics, where she worked with pregnant substance abusers and their families. In 1984, Flores joined Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center in Brooklyn where she became assistant director of the Department of Ambulatory Care. In 1986 she was named associate director, and acting director in 1989.
Since 1994, Dr. Flores has been director of the chronic disease management program at Sunset Park Health Center Network at the Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, where she developed and directed the network’ s first disease management program for patients with asthma and diabetes. She supervised an interdisciplinary team of physicians, nurse case managers, health educators, and community outreach workers in response to the community’ s dire need: the Sunset Park asthma population had escalated 38 percent in just two years, and the hospitalization rate for children was almost four times the national average.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 14