History of Hispanic Medical Practice

Beginning in the 1800s, Hispanic doctors played two important roles.  First, they provided health care to fellow Hispanics who were denied treatment by non-Hispanic doctors.  Second, to advance their own careers and improve the quality of care they could provide to their patients, they had to play the role of social reformers that fought for the right to practice as members of the American medical profession.  Dr. Hector P. Garcia (see below) often said he chose medicine as a career because it permitted him the freedom of action to pursue various social causes.

The earliest evidence of Hispanics practicing medicine in the U.S. dates to the mid-19th century. Then Hispanics were largely denied the medical training available to non-Hispanic physicians. Hispanic doctors, nonetheless, used the knowledge they acquired in their native countries to treat members of their communities who were largely ignored by non-Hispanic physicians. 

In the 1920s hospital administrators possessed enormous authority to control the future of the medical profession.  At that time medical school graduates were required by the American Medical Association to serve hospital residencies and internships.  Unfortunately, aspiring Hispanic doctors frequently were refused appointments to hospital residencies.  This discriminatory practice effectively served as a road block to participation in American medicine.

When Hispanic physicians began working with American doctors, it was to study tropical diseases that Latino immigrants brought to the U.S. (see career of Carlos J. Finlay below). Following World War II, the federal government prioritized new investments in public education, science, and medicine.  As a result, U.S. born Hispanics could look forward to greater educational opportunity with the weakening of past racial and ethnic boundaries to professional careers.  Hispanic communities perceived the attainment of advanced degrees and professional careers as more realistic opportunities thought to be unimaginable in the 1930s. 

It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that Hispanics could finally anticipate a less encumbered entry into the American medical profession. Nonetheless, despite the abandonment of earlier discriminatory restrictions, Hispanics apparently remain a small percentage of licensed American doctors. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), only 6.9 percent of active physicians identified as Hispanic in 2021. In 2022 researchers at UCLA reported Latinas were just 2.4 percent of all physicians in the U.S. 

Although the number of first-year students who are Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish origin increased by 4 percent in 2022-23, this group remains 12.0 percent of medical school matriculants.  Universities that spawned the greatest percentage of undergraduate applicants to MD-granting medical schools are in Florida, California, and Texas.  Graduates of Florida International University in Miami are the highest percentage of medical school applicants.

Renowned Hispanic Medical Professionals

Because of their professional accomplishments as medical researchers and practitioners, and their embrace of social responsibility in overcoming boundaries into the American medical practice, the careers of nine prominent Hispanic physicians are highlighted below.

Carlos Juan Finlay

Carlos Juan Finlay (1833-1915) was born in Cuba.  His father was a physician and a coffee plantation owner.  Because he was denied admission to the medical school at the University of Havana because he had not received his preliminary education there, he attended Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1853, graduating in 1855.  He returned to Cuba and established an ophthalmology practice in 1857.  Finlay’s interest in neurology and ophthalmology drew him to Paris in 1860–61.  However, he found none of these medical specialties as compelling as exploring the cause of yellow fever.

By the late 1800s, recurrent outbreaks in the U.S. had killed approximately 150,000 people. In his birthplace, Cuba, yellow fever was a source of unrelenting fear. At the time, experts believed that the cause of the disease was filth in the air or on clothing.  Finlay had a different explanation based on his observations that yellow fever epidemics were more likely to occur when the mosquito population multiplies.  His experiments revealed that biting insects transmit diseases and offered evidence that yellow fever was spread from infected humans to healthy humans by mosquitoes.

In 1881, Finlay presented his results at scientific conferences in Havana and Washington, D.C. — and was met with ridicule.  He was called a “crank” and a “crazy old man.” Although he published experimental evidence of this discovery in 1886, his ideas were ignored. It wasn’t until 1900, when the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Board, headed by the physician Walter Reed, arrived in Cuba and validated Finlay’s idea utilizing more sophisticated experimental procedures. Soon thereafter, yellow fever was eradicated in Cuba and Panama. Dr. William Gorgas, who headed public health efforts to eradicate the disease on the Panama Canal project and would later serve as U.S. Surgeon General, expressed great admiration for Finlay’s thinking. In fact, he called it “the best piece of logical reasoning that can be found in medicine anywhere.”

Finlay was appointed chief health officer of Cuba (1902–09). He was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and he received the National Order of the Legion of Honor of France in 1908. Following his death, the Cuban government created the Finlay Institute for Investigations in Tropical Medicine in his honor.

José Celso Barbosa

José Celso Barbosa (1857 – 1921) was born in Puerto Rico while the island was still a colony of Spain. In 1877, he was admitted to the medical school of the University of Michigan where he graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1880. Barbosa was the first Puerto Rican to earn a medical degree in the U.S. Upon returning to Puerto Rico to start a medical practice in his hometown of Bayamón, the Spanish authorities refused to approve his credentials. Only degrees from European medical schools were considered acceptable qualifications. When the U.S. consulate spoke up for him, Barbosa finally was able to begin practicing medicine.

Barbosa‘s concerns about providing medical treatment for Puerto Ricans led him to propose a plan for employers to pay a fee in advance to cover the health care costs of their employees. His idea represents an early version of health insurance. During the Spanish–American War, Barbosa and other doctors who were members of the Red Cross treated the wounded Puerto Rican and Spanish soldiers.

Following the war, Puerto Rico became a territory of the U.S. and Barbosa became heavily involved in island politics. On July 4, 1899, Barbosa formed the pro-statehood Partido Republicano de Puerto Rico, thereby becoming celebrated as the father of the statehood for Puerto Rico movement. Beginning in 1900, he served in the Executive Cabinet of the first civilian Governor of the island, a position he held until 1917. Barbosa was elected to the first Puerto Rican Senate in 1917 and served until 1921.

Puerto Rico declared his birthday, July 27, an official holiday that celebrates the Father of the Statehood Movement in Puerto Rico.  A video presents a history of his life and accomplishments as a leader in medicine and politics in his home country.

Héctor Pérez García

Héctor Pérez García (1914-1996), born in a small Mexican town, was four-years old when his parents and six siblings fled the violence of Mexico’s Great Revolution and settled in Mercedes, Texas. Upon graduation with a Bachelor of Arts in 1936 from the University of Texas, he began his studies at the University of Texas Medical Branch – Galveston. (Three brothers and two sisters would graduate from medical schools.)

García graduated cum laude from medical school in 1940.  His general and surgical internship was at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, because every Texas hospital refused to hire a “Mexican.”  Garcia volunteered for service in the U.S. Army in 1942.  He was an officer in the Medical Corps in the North African and European theaters.  He attained the rank of major and received a Bronze Star and six Battle Stars to recognize his service. 

Returning to South Texas in 1946, Garcia was outraged by the discrimination against Mexican-Americans.  The Veteran’s Administration hospital in Corpus Christi, the only facility that gave him visiting privileges, provided Mexican veterans care that was substantially poorer than what was provided to non-Hispanic patients.  To improve veterans’ medical care and access to benefits, Garcia organized the American G.I. Forum in 1948. The organization quickly became one of the most important civil rights voices, opening doors to military and federal employment of Hispanics.

Garcia’s career received frequent national recognition. For example, he was the first Mexican-American to serve on the United States Commission on Civil Rights (1968) and be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1984). According to Garcia, a lifetime of public service “nearly bankrupted” his Corpus Christi medical practice were it not for the financial assistance he received from his siblings, Dr. Xicotencatl Garcia and Dr. Cleotilde Garcia.

The story of Garcia’s life is told wonderfully in a video produced by the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio.

Baruj Benacerraf

Baruj Benacerraf (1920-2011) was born in Caracas, Venezuela.  He and his family lived in Paris until the threat of World War II in the late 1930s caused them to return to Venezuela.  Though his parents hoped that he would one day manage the family’s textile business, Benacerraf chose to study science at Columbia University from which he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1942.  Despite having completed the prerequisites for admission to medical school and attained an outstanding academic record, Benacerraf’s applications to more than 20 medical schools were rejected.  He attributed his failure to gain admission to a tendency not to admit foreigners.  With the help of a friend, he was admitted to the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond in 1943, the same year in which he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.  Benacerraf received his M.D. in 1945.

Following two years of military service, Benacerraf returned to Columbia University in 1948 to begin his studies of immunology in the laboratory of Elvin Kabat. Family considerations caused him to relocate to Paris for six years beginning in 1949. During this period, he cared for his father and looked after the family business in Venezuela. When he returned to the U.S. in 1956, he accepted a position as professor of pathology at New York University’s School of Medicine. There, working with other famous scientists, Benacerraf conducted his pioneering research on the operation of the immune system.  Benacerraf’s research led him in 1968 to accept the post of chief of the immunology laboratory at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. Desiring a return to academic life, he moved to Harvard Medical School in 1970 where Benacerraf was chairperson of a new department of comparative pathology.  He was named president and chief executive officer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard in 1980. In that post, Benacerraf administered research projects related to his own work. He remained in that post until his retirement in 1991.

Benacerraf wrote 300 research papers and several major immunology texts, including Textbook of Immunology (1979). Honors were heaped on him worldwide. The most notable was the 1980 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology that he shared with two other immunologists for their investigations into the workings of the human immune system. The three independently discovered “genetically determined structures on the cell surface that regulate immunological reactions.” Specifically, gene groups (i.e., histocompatibility complexes) were identified that govern a person’s immune response. This group of immune response (Ir) genes control whether cells within the body coexist or attack each other. Together their research has led to major advances in determining a person’s ability to fight disease and in the success of organ transplantation that is dependent upon the genetic compatibility of donor and recipient.

A very detailed biography is presented on a video.

Helen Rodriguez-Trías

Helen Rodriguez-Trías (1929 – 2001) was born in New York City. As a Latina child, she experienced bias in grade school. Despite her good grades and reading skills, she was placed in a class with academically handicapped children. Trías went to Puerto Rico in 1948 to attend college at the Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR). Her studies were interrupted due to her involvement in the Puerto Rican independence movement. She then attended UPR’s medical school, graduating with highest honors in 1960.  By this time Trías was the mother of four children.

Trías understood that political and social rights are clearly tied to matters of public health. Therefore, during her residency she founded the first center for newborn babies in Puerto Rico, resulting in a 50 percent decrease in child mortality rates within three years. Also, she brought attention to the fact that nearly a third of child-bearing women in Puerto Rico were sterilized without being informed of the consequences.

Upon her return to New York in 1970, Trías became Director of Pediatrics at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. There she fought to promote the healthcare rights of the neighborhood’s low-income residents. In the 1980s she worked on behalf of women with HIV while serving as medical director of the New York State Department of Health Aids. Trías continued that work with the New York City Department of Health Mental Hygiene. In 1993, the American Public Health Association elected her its first Latina president.

In 2001, Trías received a Presidential Citizens Medal from President Bill Clinton. She received the award for her efforts on behalf of children, women, and people with AIDS. Also notable among her accomplishments was the work on women’s reproductive rights, including help in drafting U.S. federal sterilization guidelines in 1979.

Antonia Coello Novello

Antonia Coello Novello was born in Puerto Rico in 1944. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree (1965) and an M.D. (1970) at the University of Puerto Rico. After her marriage to Joseph R. Novello, she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. At the University of Michigan Medical Center, she completed an internship and residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in pediatric nephrology. In 1982, Novello earned a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University.

Novello’s career at the National Institutes of Health began in 1978. By 1986 she had been promoted to the deputy directorship of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. As a congressional fellow on the staff of the Labor and Human Resources Committee in 1982-83, Novello helped write legislation dealing with a variety of important health issues, including organ transplants and cigarette warning labels.  She was appointed Surgeon General of the U.S. in 1990 by President George Bush, making Novello the first Puerto Rican and the first Latina to occupy this position.  While holding this office, Novello promoted an antismoking campaign, upgraded AIDS education, and improved health care for minorities, women, and children.

After stepping down as Surgeon General in 1993, Novello worked with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to address women’s and children’s health issues. As a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1996, Novello continued efforts to develop education and research programs intended to assist communities without adequate health care resources.

In 1999, Novello became commissioner of the largest public health agency in the U.S., the New York State Department of Health. There she guided the department’s efforts to improve State programs such as Child Health Plus and Medicaid. She served as State commissioner of health until 2007.

Novello received numerous awards throughout her career, including the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal (2002) and induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame (1994). Importantly, Novello’s legacy is that Latinas had begun to establish themselves as significant medical professionals.  In a video of her speech to the 2015 National Medical Association Convention, she discusses the disparity that Hispanic doctors have had to overcome.

Jose R. Romero

Born in Mexico City, Jose R. Romero attended high school in California. Romero earned his medical diploma from the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, the first private university and medical school in Mexico. Internship, residency, and fellowship followed at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Romero’s career focused on infectious disease.

Romero began practicing medicine in the U.S. at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. There he was Director for Latino Health-Related Research Affairs and Director of the Minority Health Education and Research Office. Romero moved to Arkansas in 2008 as Director of the Section of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences and at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. He served as the Director of Clinical Trials Research at Arkansas Children’s Research Institute from 2008-2019. He holds the Horace C. Cabe Endowed Chair in Infectious Diseases at Arkansas Childrens. Romero was named Arkansas’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) Childhood Immunization Champion for his outstanding efforts to promote childhood immunization.  His critical analysis of vaccine data helped lead the State through several influenzas, pertussis, mumps, and measles outbreaks.

Romero’s career in positions of public service began as a member of the Arkansas Vaccine Medical Advisory Committee in 2008 and chair of the committee since 2015.  Additionally, he was chief medical officer at the Arkansas Department of Medical Health (ADH). This was followed by appointment as interim secretary of health at ADH and, in August of 2020, appointment as ADH secretary. 

Romero’s leadership in treating infectious disease resulted in being named chairperson of the U.S. CDC’s Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. That committee created the vaccine schedules on which government programs and insurers relied in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. Once the Food and Drug Administration approves a vaccine for release, this CDC committee recommends a schedule for vaccination based upon priorities it establishes for various groups of Americans who need immunization from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Beginning in June of 2022, Romero started a new job as director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. He describes highlights of his work in this video.

Nora Volkow

Nora Volkow was born in Mexico City in 1956. Gifts of chemistry kits and books from her father, a pharmaceutical chemist, influenced Volkow’s choice of a career in medicine and science.  She completed her studies in Mexico City at the Modern American School and the National University of Mexico from which she earned her medical degree and the Robins award for best medical student of her generation.  While waiting to begin studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her mind was changed about where to continue her training because of research on brain imaging in which she participated as a volunteer at New York University (NYU).  While pursuing this line of research, Volkow decided to stay on at NYU to complete her psychiatric residency.  There she earned the Laughlin Fellowship Award and recognition as one of the 10 outstanding Psychiatric Residents in the U.S.

Volkow was hired as a researcher by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). Subsequently, she was named to a variety of administrative positions at BNL, including Director of Nuclear Medicine, Chairman of the Medical Department, and Associate Director for Life Sciences. Of substantial importance to her career was appointment as the Director of the Regional Neuroimaging Center at the BNL. She directed integrative research on drug addiction with support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the DOE. Volkow also served as a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and as Associate Dean of its Medical School.

In 2003, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) made Volkow Director of NIDA. She guided research that uses brain imaging to investigate the toxic and addictive properties of abusive drugs. This work led to an understanding that addiction is a disease that damages the functioning of neural circuits in the brain that regulate reward, motivation, and self-control. Volkow developed original intervention strategies to prevent and treat drug abuse such as addictions due to prescription opioid abuse. In addition to her role at NIDA, Volkow is a Senior Investigator at the Laboratory of Neuroimaging at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, another division of NIH. There she studied the disruptive effects of abusive drugs on brain functions responsible for diseases of addiction and obesity. Volkow used a 2014 TED talk to explain her work on addiction as a disease that affects the brain and, thus, behavior. With increasing concern about drug addiction, she is in great demand to speak about the problem. A number of videos are available online of her presentations, including a comprehensive 2023 interview with Volkov about her work (ignore the few seconds of silence at the beginning).

Volkow’s work has received recognition by important news publications.  For example, U.S. News & World Report named her Innovator of the Year in 2000.  In 2006, Newsweek listed her as one of 21 people predicted to be a newsmaker in 2007.  This prediction was confirmed in Time magazine in 2007 by including Volkow among 100 persons whose power, talent, and moral example were transforming the world.  In 2011, Washingtonian Magazine listed her among that city’s 100 most powerful women.  Finally, in 2017 Fortune magazine named Volkow one of 34 leaders who are changing health care.

Volkow’s service to government was recognized by a Nathan Davis Award for Outstanding Government Service and by a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal.  Her scientific achievements earned her membership in the Institute of Medicine in the National Academy of Sciences and into the Association of American Physicians.  In 2012, Volkow was recipient of the Hispanic Scientist of the Year Award by the Museum of Science & Industry (Tampa) for promoting scientific understanding in the community and providing a role model for Hispanic youth.

Discussion Questions

1. What did you learn about the process that must be completed to become a doctor of medicine, M.D.? Is becoming a doctor a career that you would like to pursue? If so, what is the attraction of becoming a doctor? Do you have a current preference for a particular medical specialty? If the practice of medicine is not a career that you would like to pursue, why is this profession not appealing to you? 
2. Beside the fact that they all are Hispanic, are there any other similarities shared among the nine doctors? Provide examples in your answers.
3. What are some of the health problems that Hispanic doctors have studied?
4. If you could turn back the calendar to earlier times, which of the nine doctors described would you have liked to work with? Why?
5. Why do you think that it is important that Hispanic doctors have contributed to the practice of medicine?

Additional Resources

International Medical Aid (a not-for-profit organization focused on creating mutually beneficial, ethical, and sustainable programs for the medical community) compiled a list of the average GPA and MCAT scores for every medical school in the U.S. for 2022.  This free resource offers a clearer idea of which medical schools to focus on during the application process.

Short profiles of notable practicing Hispanic physicians are available in Latino Leaders magazine.