While others may have been growing up on “Green Eggs and Ham,” Robert Rodriguez’s nights as a child were filled with his mother reading him the periodic table, beginning a journey that’s taken him to places he may not have even dreamed of at the time.
Nearly 50 years later, that little boy is now Dr. Rodriguez, and he’s focused his career on researching various aspects of emergency care and public health, including trauma, opioid overdose and treatment for overdose.
That work has taken him from Brownsville to Notre Dame, then from Harvard to California before landing an advisory role for the Biden administration.
Over the last 10 to 15 years, Rodriguez said he has focused his efforts on public health issues, specifically related to communities that lack access to standard health care.
“People who are immigrants, people who are homeless, who don’t basically have a doctor or they don’t have a clinic where they can go for health care, they turn to the emergency department for their health care,” Rodriguez said. “(It) is the safety net for these underserved populations.”
The profile on Dr. Rodriguez, MD, Vice Chair for Clinical Research and Professor of Emergency Medicine, appeared in myRGV.com on Sep. 27.