Home » Spotlights » Leo Lopez III, MD

Leo Lopez III, MD

What year did you graduate from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio?

2015

What degree do you have?

MD

What is your specialty?

Family and Community Medicine

What was the most valuable lesson – inside or outside the classroom – you learned at UT Health San Antonio?

The experience I had as a third-year medical student was invaluable. I learned the depth of fear, uncertainty, and insecurity as I assessed a patient for the first time. The patient and I shared in these rudimentary emotions, as we engaged in the vulnerability of the healing process. These patient care experiences, during the infancy of my training, provided sustainable grounding for my development as a clinician.

What inspired you to want to become a doctor?

I’ve wanted to be a doctor after a series of personal experiences over the past 20 years, including witnessing my mother’s struggle with breast cancer, my personal difficulties managing traumatic brain injury and brain surgery, mentorship from community physicians, and involvement in underserved, global health clinical experiences.

What do you remember most vividly about your time at UT Health?

I remember the devoted faculty and staff who have spent their careers training physicians. I’ll forever be grateful to have learned from these brilliant and compassionate people.

What was your most rewarding experience at the university?

In 2012 and 2014, I spent time in Guatemala through the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at UT Health San Antonio. These global health experiences encouraged me to consider population health, and strengthened my passion in addressing health disparities.

What is your greatest professional achievement?

• 2018 National Hispanic Medical Association Resident Physician of the Year
• 2017 National Hispanic Medical Association Resident Physician of the Year
• 2011-2015 Lozano Long Presidential Scholar
• President of the Board for “Salud, Su Derecho” non-profit organization
• Board Member for “Texas Doctors for Social Responsibility”
• Clinical Adviser for “Corazon Clinic”- a free clinic for patients suffering homelessness in San Antonio
• 2017 Delivered Presentation at the World Congress for Clinical Safety in Rome, Italy
• 2016 Directed, wrote and produced “Texas UnMedicaided” documentary film about Medicaid expansion in Texas
• 2016 Delivered TEDxTalk “Image of the Enemy”
• 2015 United States Public Health Services Excellence in Public Health Award Winner
• 2015 Produced short film on “youth as agents of change” with the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth in Sendai, Japan
• 2014 Delivered TEDxTalk “The New Drug Trade” on health disparities in the Rio Grande Valley
• 2014 Directed and produced documentary film “Image of the Enemy” shot on location in the Palestinian Territories in West Bank, Israel, the Middle East.
• 2013 Commissioned as investigative journalist for “The Lancet,” and published piece entitled “The New Drug Trade”

What is your current occupation and where? What’s a day on the job like for you?

I’m currently a third-year, senior resident physician with CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency Program. We are a community-based residency program aimed at training family medicine physicians interested in full-spectrum training. As a third-year resident, I periodically serve as the leader of our inpatient hospital service where I oversee a team of junior residents and interns. We manage critically-ill patients in our intensive care unit, manage our patients on the medical and surgical floors, triage and deliver laboring mothers, manage newborn care, and fulfill our roles at our outpatient continuity clinic. As residents, we also serve on hospital committees, and perform quality improvement research.

I’ve accepted a Post-Doctoral Fellowship Position with Yale University through the National Clinician Scholars Program (NCSP). The NCSP at Yale is an interprofessional fellowship program designed to prepare a select group of future clinician leaders to improve health and health care in the U.S. through scholarship and action at the national, state, and local levels. I will begin my post-doctoral fellowship with Yale in the summer of 2018.

What advice do you have for current students?

Every day, I wake up and reflect on how much I have to learn. I work relentlessly to improve that condition daily. I encourage others to do the same. Serve others in all you do, and seek truth, beauty, wisdom, and justice in all things.

Why do you give back to the university (time and/or donation)?

I hold strongly to the university’s mission: “To make lives better” I’m devoted to serving the human condition for the rest of my career.