Meet the Speakers - Bios

Dr. Luis Padilla

Dr. Luis Padilla is a board certified family physician and the Medical Director of Unity Health Care’s Upper Cardozo Health Center located in Columbia Heights, Washington DC. The federally qualified health center serves an ethnically diverse immigrant community who are uninsured, underinsured, or homeless with an average literacy level of fourth grade. The center has 18,000 enrolled patients accounting for 83,000 visits in 2008. 

The son of immigrants, Dr. Padilla was born in Guatemala. When he was three years old, his parents moved to the United States to work and left him in the care of his grandmother. He was reunited with his family after a four year separation. He is the first in his family to attend college and received his B.A. in philosophy and B.S. in biology from the University of California at Irvine in 1994. He earned his medical degree from Wake Forest School of Medicine in 2001 and completed his family medicine residency at Brown University in 2004.

A committed advocate for the underserved he completed his three year National Health Service Corp Scholar (NHSC) service in 2007 at Unity’s Upper Cardozo Health Center. He was appointed to the National Advisory Council of the National Health Service Corps.  The council is a body of clinicians and health care administrators who possess knowledge of underserved communities and health care implementation and improvement. NAC reports to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and, by designation, the Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration.

He is married to Dr. Karen Mazie a pediatrician at Mary’s Center for Maternal and Child Health and is the proud father of Max William Padilla, age three months. They live in the community they serve, six blocks from the Upper Cardozo Health Center.

 

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