Renowned Brownsville physician earns coveted honor for research

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.”

In one of his more recent endeavors, Rodriguez said he sought to provide vaccines to underserved communities.

What’s next for Rodriguez? The good doctor now plans to work toward creating a collaboration between the U.S. and Mexico for emergency health care accessibility.

Throughout the project Rodriguez will be observing emergency and intensive care along the U.S. and Mexico border in attempts to identify opportunities for collaboration between the two nations to address healthcare needs.

Rodriguez said he was inspired to research the possibility of collaborative emergency care after seeing the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on border communities. In the Rio Grande Valley alone, for instance, more than 4,000 lives were claimed by the virus.

It’s this dedication to serving the medical needs of his communities that’s led to an honor that Rodriguez will receive on Oct.1 — fittingly a day that recognizes Hispanic doctors.

Rodriguez is being recognized with the American College of Emergency Physicians 2024 Award for Outstanding Contribution in Research. It is a coveted honor the college awards annually based on a body of research work, not unlike a lifetime achievement recognition for significant contributions in emergency medicine.

Among the areas of his research that helped him win the award was something that hit rather close to home.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Rodriguez conducted research on the disparities in health care that arose at that time, including research on its impact on frontline providers such as emergency and critical care personnel.

He returned to Brownsville to help the hospital he was born in, Valley Baptist in Brownsville, in the intensive care unit. Former U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela called him asking for help.

“It was a transformative experience in my career,” Rodriguez said. “Just seeing everybody work so hard there and the spirit of the community just supporting the hospital.”

His experience inspired him to speak to Congress and other organizations, eventually serving on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board where he advocated for communities that have fewer resources and limited access to health care.

“Even though I have been out of Brownsville for decades, Brownsville and the Valley is still my real home,” Rodriguez said.

THE MEDICAL JOURNEY

For Rodriguez, a career in medicine and research was not always the plan.

“I didn’t really have any role models in medicine,” Rodriguez said, adding that his father was a football coach and athletics director while his mother was a science teacher. “I would say that it came from just a love of science.”

He recalled his mom conducting experiments at home and buying him a microscope.

After graduating from St. Joseph Academy in Brownsville, Rodriguez went on to complete his undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame.

“For a while I thought maybe I would be an engineer,” Rodriguez said, jokingly adding that after taking one engineering class as an undergraduate he quickly realized it was not what he wanted to do.

He later joined his roommates in the pre-med track that led him to volunteering in an emergency department.

“That was it for me,” Rodriguez said. “I loved all of the different fields of medicine but I just found my home in the emergency department.”

After finding his calling, Rodriguez went on to attend Harvard Medical School where he continued his studies in emergency care.

It was that journey that led him toward his life as professor at the University of California San Francisco where he teaches emergency medicine.

Not only does he teach at the university but he also practices emergency medicine and critical care at the San Francisco county hospital.

Throughout his career Rodriguez has conducted various research projects some of which have been published in both the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals and the Journal of American Medical Association.

The award for Rodriguez is not the only fulfilling aspect of his career but also the opportunity to teach future generations of healthcare workers.

“They carry it forward,” Rodriguez said, adding that he hopes to be a source of confidence for anyone interested in the medical field to not be intimidated by the academic experience, and wants to urge them to not be afraid to ask questions.

But it’s going to take experimenting in various fields, he added, noting that it’s often more helpful for students entering college to have options from which they can find their own calling.

“Explore multiple different fields of study and you have to talk to as many people as you can in different fields that you’re considering,” Rodriguez said, emphasizing the importance of networking and shadowing those in the career they’re pursuing.

Everyone will experience failure or rejection, but remaining persistent will unveil the most satisfying of rewards, and it doesn’t hurt to have help along the way, like a mentor, he stressed.