Advocates are working to raise awareness of the relatively small number of Latino physicians and surgeons there are in the United States amid growing health care needs and disparities in the community.
“For the last 40 years, the number of Latino physicians has not changed. That’s a failure,” Dr. Cesar Padilla, one of the organizers of the campaign and a clinical assistant professor at Stanford’s University School of Medicine, told NBC News.
Latinos account for 7% of the overall physician and surgeon workforce and 9% of all health care practitioners and technicians, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis. Meanwhile, almost 1 in 5 Americans, 62.6 million, are Latino, according to the latest 2020 census numbers, a 23% increase from 2010.
“There was urgency to increase the number of Latino physicians in the United States before Covid. It’s a crisis now,” Padilla added, noting the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on the Latino community.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows Latinos are 1.5 times more likely to test positive for Covid-19, twice as likely to be hospitalized and 1.8 times more likely to die from the virus than their white counterparts. In total, so far Latinos made up 17.1% of all Covid-related deaths and 24.6% of all cases.
Latinos are less likely to have health coverage than their non-Latino counterparts at 20% compared to 9%, according to a report by the Department of Health and Human Services. Along with language and cultural barriers, socioeconomic factors have also led to poorer patient outcomes, the report noted.
Physicians who speak the same native language and are able to relate to the cultural experiences of their patients have been linked to higher patient outcomes, a notion that is also supported by The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The nonprofit group, which accredits all graduate medical training programs for physicians in the U.S., emphasizes the need to educate physicians who are more likely to work in underserved areas or with minority patients on these nuances.
“I was the only Mexican in my medical school class out of 104 students. That did not sit very well with me because I felt anxiety. I felt sort of out of place,” said Padilla, who is double-fellowship trained from Harvard Medical School in critical care medicine and obstetric anesthesiology, with additional training in critical care echocardiography.
Dr. Michael Galvez, director of pediatric hand and upper extremity surgery at Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera, California, was also concerned by the low number of Latino faculty in the surgical field and partnered with Padilla to help raise awareness on the disparity.
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