Health Care Heroes Awards 2023: Career Achievement
Dr. Pablo Rodriguez
Nuestra Salud Productions LLC founder and CEO
WANTING TO DO THE RIGHT THING became Dr. Pablo Rodriguez’s main mission in life. Rodriguez rose from the depths of poverty in his native Puerto Rico to become a Rhode Island health care leader for more than three decades.
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For 22 years, Rodriguez was medical director at Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island. Along with helping women in medical need, Rodriguez also was an active voice for the organization, regularly testifying on laws benefiting reproductive health.
Rodriguez also has served on various boards, including for the Rhode Island Foundation and Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island, and he currently serves on the state’s COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Committee. Additionally, Rodriguez is a vice chairperson for Clinica Esperanza/Hope Clinic and volunteers for the organization’s COVID-19 clinic, administering vaccines.
In 2022, Rodriguez, now retired from medical practice, founded and became CEO of Nuestra Salud Productions LLC, a multimedia production company and website that provides health information for the Spanish-speaking community. Nuestra Salud centers on a Spanish-language website that serves as a repository for radio shows, podcasts and videos that Rodriguez produces, as well as a medical encyclopedia, a directory of Spanish-speaking doctors in Rhode Island, and a directory of clinical research studies that are happening in the state.
What led you to choose health care as your profession? It combined all of my passions. Science, service to others and theater. Knowing how to communicate difficult scientific concepts and at the same time conveying your compassion and desire to heal requires the skills of an actor whose script is written on the fly as we consult with patients.
How have you helped boost the quality of or access to health care? Improving health literacy in the Spanish-speaking community has been my mission. I’ve been producing TV, radio and currently web content that explains medical concepts in a very accessible way. Throughout my career, I have worked in more than a dozen commissions involved in solving some of our most pressing health problems. I am most proud of my efforts in the founding of Neighborhood Health Plan [of Rhode Island] while I was chairperson of the Rhode Island Foundation and currently as vice chair of Clinica Esperanza/Hope Clinic.
What is the biggest challenge you and your organization are facing this year? Most of the work I have done with media throughout the years has been self-funded. Now that I am retired from clinical medicine, that funding source has become limited. Producing high-quality multimedia materials in Spanish is expensive, and thus far I have gotten financial support from a limited group of sponsors. Most challenging is the current distrust of the public after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been engendered by social media. Keeping up with misinformation is a full-time job.
Tell us one thing that most people don’t know about you. I was an award-winning actor in high school in Puerto Rico. I am also an avid windsurfer, even though I can’t swim too far.
