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Dr. Joseph Carrillo
Bringing much-needed diversity to the medical profession
BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

IT’S A SAD IRONY that a man devoted to increasing the number of physicians of color in Boston will soon deprive the city of one of the best — himself.

Dr. Joseph Carrillo is not done fighting for the cause, however. Although the pediatrician is moving to California’s Napa Valley to set up a practice, he will continue to serve as physician convener for the Physician Diversity Project, which began its work this June.

Of Mexican descent, born and raised in Globe, Arizona, and educated at the University of Arizona’s undergraduate and medical schools, Carrillo opted for a brief rotation at Children’s Hospital in Boston in 1987 and ended up staying 16 years.

Pediatrics, he says, was always his calling. As a medical student in Tucson, he realized the importance of diversity in the medical professions. Pregnant women from the Tucson barrios, often undocumented aliens, would show up at the hospital ready to deliver, having received no prenatal care. Carrillo helped create the Dar A Luz ("To Give Birth") prenatal clinic to serve them. For that effort, he and his colleagues were named 1981 "Citizens of the Year" by the American Association of Social Workers.

"I always saw the value of my cultural background. Some of my colleagues speak Spanish — or think they speak Spanish," Carrillo laughs. "In the Latin community, doctors are really held in high regard — almost like priests. Parents will smile and agree even if they don’t understand."

The problem of effective minority health care goes further than language. Carrillo says that the literature, and his own experience, tells him that patients are much more comfortable, and thus more honest, with doctors who share their culture. He sees this constantly at the South End Community Health Center (SECHC), where he has treated patients for 16 years. "A mother who was just here was telling me things about this incident at school that she might not have told a Caucasian doctor," he says. The same also holds true for many African-American patients, he adds.

In Massachusetts, a mere three percent of doctors are black or Latino. The state’s four medical schools graduated 32 African-Americans and 32 Hispanics in 2001, out of a total of 558 graduates. The disparity is especially acute in and around Boston.

Despite these stark numbers, Carrillo’s diversity message hasn’t always found a receptive audience in this city, where medical professionals are heavily invested in the idea that they are already the best in the world. "It’s very frustrating," he says of his efforts to increase physician diversity at Children’s Hospital. "The physician chiefs, they were all white men with white hair and white coats. If you wanted to see people of color, go to the basement, the back of the restaurant, the cleaning crews."

Carrillo has been promoting this cause for years, at both Children’s and that hospital’s Martha Eliot Health Center in Jamaica Plain. During his eight-year tenure as Martha Eliot’s executive medical director, he hired three Latino and three African-American physicians, and received an award for his Latino Youth Mentorship Program.

His work continued in 1999, when he became Children’s vice-president for community health services, a position he used to increase the diversity of medical professionals throughout the hospital. Although he feels he made a difference, he also saw that the effort needed to encompass more than one institution.

That’s why he joined the Physician Diversity Project, which he’s helping to pilot in Boston and New York, and which aims to encourage more minorities to enter the medical field. By working with minority children and their parents, urban public schools, medical schools, and teaching hospitals, the program seeks to tackle at every level the factors that have created the dearth of minority physicians.

To further the project, Carrillo brought together senior representatives from Boston’s teaching hospitals and medical schools, who he says are genuinely committed to the project. "Everybody’s been in their silos" trying to encourage diversity internally, he says. "Let’s share the information and see how we can work collectively on this issue."

"Joe really has the relationships, the knowledge, and the expertise to bring everyone together on such a sensitive topic," says Physician Diversity Project director Daniel Delaney.

Forty-six and single, Carrillo recently decided to pick up and move to California, to work with Mexican-American children. "It’s very appealing to me to go back to my own community, and back to practice full-time," he says in his soft, pleasant voice. He plans to continue his work with the diversity program and expand it to California.

"He’s a fine doctor," says Dr. Gerald Hass, executive director of the SECHC. "He’s beloved by his patients. We’re going to miss him."


Issue Date: October 31 - November 6, 2003
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