Bridging the Gap: Advocating for More Latinx Physicians

A neonatologist at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health is dedicated to increasing Latinx representation in medicine by mentoring aspiring physicians and addressing systemic challenges faced by Latinx professionals.

Oct. 1 is National Latino Physician Day, a day dedicated to creating awareness around the need for more Latino and Latina doctors. According to the organization, only 6% of physicians are Latinx in the United States, whereas the country’s population is 19% Latinx. It’s a disparity that neonatologist Sonia Bonifacio, MD, wants to help change.

“In California, one of every two children born is of Latino origin,” Dr. Bonifacio says. “It’s incredibly important for people who are sick or who need preventive care to see providers who reflect their differences, culture, and who can communicate with them and provide care with cultural humility. Latinx Heritage Month is an opportunity to highlight the need to push to increase the number of all Latinx health professionals.”

Dr. Bonifacio is dedicated to increasing representation in the medical field, in part by addressing the challenges that Latinx physicians face in their careers—and that she’s experienced firsthand. “The hardest thing is that there aren’t people in this space who look like me in leadership positions, and when people don’t have the same life experiences, or don’t see people who look like you, it’s challenging to persist,” she says. “You usually don’t have generational wealth that would allow you to focus on your education or to pursue unpaid experiences like research; instead, you are working to pay rent in college and medical school. You usually don’t have doctors in the family to help you get shadowing experiences or the resources to get your CV to the most prestigious level. So, I can see why Latinx people don’t enter medicine or health care in general. Once you are in medicine, you may need to pursue nonacademic positions that generally pay better because your family is counting on you to help support them.”

This is why Dr. Bonifacio is a dedicated mentor and sponsor to other Latinx physicians as a clinical professor in Neonatology and medical director of the Neonatal NeuroIntensive Care Unit (NeuroNICU) at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. Before that, while in college, she set up mentoring experiences for high school students and tutoring opportunities for kids in middle school. During medical school, she did community outreach through the Latino Medical Student Association. And now, as a faculty member, she tries to increase representation within neonatology by mentoring fellows one-on-one and by providing them opportunities they need to continue along the academic path, such as nominating worthy candidates for awards and suggesting them as speakers at events.

Career-wise, Dr. Bonifacio is most proud of persisting in academic medicine as someone who’s underrepresented in the field. This persistence is what inspired her to join the hospital’s Latino Faculty Advocacy group, which supports initiatives to create a diverse physician workforce and a support network for Latinx faculty and students, with the goal of reducing health care disparities. She also helps lead a health equity task force within the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, as well as working to promote families’ access to interpreter services.

As a specialist in neurocritical care, she’s focused on finding better ways to protect critically ill or premature babies’ fragile brains while they’re in the hospital. She was inspired to go into medicine by her mother, who had dreams of becoming a clinician herself. But as one of 15 kids growing up in rural Mexico—at a time when girls weren’t always allowed to go to school—she didn’t get to pursue a medical career in Mexico or when she immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. “My mom instilled in me a curiosity to think about how the body works, and she would encourage me to ask questions,” says Dr. Bonifacio. When cooking dinner, for example, her mother would show her the neck or heart. “I had an early interest in looking at organs and thinking about how the body works,” she says.

Some babies stay in the NICU for several months, and Dr. Bonifacio works to support the babies’ parents too. It’s especially meaningful to her when she can help NICU families who are immigrants or first-generation Americans. “One of my biggest joys is helping families who remind me of my mom and being able to connect with them,” she says. “As a first-generation Mexican American and coming from a place of not having a lot, being raised by a single mom, and just persisting in this space that is challenging…I’m proud of continuing to uplift families and uplift our trainees—not just by bringing them into medicine but being there for them so they will continue to blaze trails and break glass ceilings.”