Given the historic opportunity to lead the nation as it transforms to a nation that is about to become a majority of current minority populations, President Elect Obama and his Transition Team, announced this week, should consider identifying a diverse leadership among the political appointees in the health related positions–not just HHS, VA, DOD, but at the White House-–to develop a realistic transformation in the health care reform policy making process. There is a critical need to consider health care reform that allows the health system to become more responsive to the new America with cultural competence and literacy as well as including issues based on the social determinants of health. The President-Elect plan for access to care and quality health care that addresses health disparities is a vision needed sooner than later in order to prepare for the changing population. And of course, the health of minority women and their families needs to become a priority item as the policy making starts after January with the attention to helping them through SCHIP, Medicaid and Medicare.

As a leader from the Hispanic community with supportive parents and counselors and with a stellar academic background, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in the Federal Health Careers Opportunity Program (PHS Title VII) – not only to be a program coordinator for a local CBO (East LA Health Task Force, 1980), but as a pre-med student from Stanford University who had not completed the pre-med curriculum upon graduation, I was appointed to an HCOP post-bac program (Creighton University, 1981) and was accepted into UCLA Medical School in 1982 where I served as a counselor for minority premed students for the State of California HCOP program. I know several Latino physicians and public health professionals who benefited from this program and wouldn’t be where they are if it hadn’t been for this program. HCOP has been the major recruitment program for disadvantaged students to enter medicine and public health careers - until the Federal government decided to decimate it in 2006. Now with the current physician and public health workforce shortage along with the tremendous growth in the diversity of the U.S. population, this program should be brought back to its 2005 funding level. In addition, I believe there should be a regional approach to workforce planning and implementation, so that programs in regions with large Hispanic populations target their efforts to bring Hispanic students into the region’s medical and public health schools. The next President needs to understand the importance of having a diverse health care workforce – the literature has shown that Hispanic and African American physicians and dentists generally care for more minority, Medicaid and uninsured patients - the most vulnerable patients in our society, and those who, without health care, tend to be the sickest with the greatest health care costs to the nation.