AMA Foundation Honors San Diego Physician for Increasing Access to Healthcare in the United States
Click Here to Watch the Video Presented About Dr. Hood at the Awards Ceremony
Rodney Hood, MD, SDCMS-CMA member since 1977, is a recipient of the 2011 Pride in the Profession Awards. Presented by the AMA Foundation, in association with Pfizer Inc., the award recognizes physicians who aid underserved populations in the United States. The award will be presented on Tuesday, February 8, at the 2011 Excellence in Medicine Awards Ceremony, in conjunction with the AMA National Advocacy Conference in Washington, DC.
“These Excellence in Medicine Award recipients are truly awe-inspiring,” said AMA Foundation President Barney Maynard, MD. “They show everyone, inside and outside the medical community, the tremendous impact that one person can make in the world. They inspire us all to do more.”
Dr. Hood has made an impact on the issue of racial and ethnic health disparities in San Diego and throughout the United States. Dr. Hood describes himself as “a physician who always knew his destiny was to practice medicine in a low-income area to give back to the community that helped raise him.” He opened his medical practice in 1976 in an underserved area of San Diego. Then, as well as now, residents of this community suffer from chronic diseases with health statistics that document higher rates of morbidity and mortality from diseases such as cancer, stroke, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS. His private practice, Careview Medical Group, has expanded to four providers, and in 1994 he cofounded the Multicultural Primary Care Medical Group, IPA, now composed of over 100 primary care physicians and 200 specialists of Latino, African American, Asian, and European ethnicities. This organization received a grant through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that created a network of private physicians to render care to patients with no or inadequate medical coverage. This initiative has evolved into Project Access currently sponsored by the San Diego County Medical Society Foundation.
In addition to working on these issues in San Diego, Dr. Hood has worked tirelessly on a national level, as president of the National Medical Association, as well as a governing council member of the AMA Minority Affairs Consortium, to improve the systems that will reduce healthcare disparities. At the request of the Congressional Black Caucus, he led several delegations to Cuba to evaluate their health delivery and health education system, making recommendations that would help American medical students in Cuba have an easier path into U.S. residency programs as a solution to increase diversity in the workforce. He is a passionate national speaker on issues that involve health equity in delivery of medical services, health policy, and finances. His areas of expertise include medical history, racism in medicine, health inequities, cultural competency and the role of diversity in medicine, medical administration, and financial models to combat health inequities.
Leonard Weather, Jr, RPh, MD, president of the National Medical Association, stated, “Dr. Hood has devoted his entire career to eliminating healthcare disparities for minorities and the underserved and ensuring that all Americans receive quality and affordable healthcare services. With the utmost integrity, he has for more than 20 years provided exemplary medical care to the patients that he serves.”