JOSÉ RAUL BOLAÑOS IS THE oldest of seven children. He was born in Aldea Bolaños in El Salvador. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was three years old. José went to public schools up through high school and began excelling in the fifth grade. He was very excited about math, science, woodworking, and cars.

José scored the highest in the country in the Armed Forces Battery Test and was offered a position at West Point. Because he had no one to give him advice on making this decision, José waited and was ultimately accepted to the University of Southern California (USC) and UC Berkeley. José got a scholarship to USC and went there. He feels blessed with the ability to use his brain and intelligence and went on to major in biomedical engineering. Later, he transferred to the University of California at Irvine to major in biology (BS). Subsequently he went to UC Davis Medical School and ultimately to Stanford and finished as an ob/gyn and fertility specialist. José was in private medical practice for 22 years and delivered over 5,000 babies. “God has been good,” is how José describes his life.

He began his medical practice in Los Gatos, California (mid‐upper income) and subsequently purchased a medical practice in East San José that allowed him to care for more Latino patients. He created his own information system, medical records, labs, and billing system. One problem arose: José had 10,000 patient records. When planning to transfer the records into the electronic medical record, he learned that the identifying numbers were 12 to 16 digits, which did not allow for his thousands of patients. José created an algorithm that created a unique ID for every one of the patients: “first name initial+last name” – and eight digits for the birthdate. Problem solved, and that was about 25 years ago!

After taking care of the Latino community in East San José, it became clear to José that there was a need for more Latino doctors. José has always felt it to be important to be a role model for younger doctors, because only 5.8 percent of U.S. physicians are Hispanic. He realized that the number of physicians documented by the Association of American Medical Colleges shows that more millennials and generation Z Latino students need to focus on their educational aspirations to become physicians, especially after experiencing the disparities of Latinos impacted by COVID‐19.

José's efforts have been to continue to solve problems in electronic records and cybersecurity. He is also concerned that most enterprise systems lack security. Today, over 10 billion usernames and passwords are compromised and on the dark web! Criminals are stealing over one third of $3.5 trillion in healthcare expenditures. The United States is struggling with problems caused by the COVID‐19 pandemic, as many workers are working from home and logging in with their passwords and posing a massive cybersecurity risk. José is the CEO of a two‐year‐old start‐up that has a patent on a new identity and login process (with no passwords). José states that they have an app that is used to login to a new splash screen on your computer that reads your Dynamic Nimbus‐Key ID (encrypted QR code) and a dynamic PIN. This protects the enterprise with a revolutionary new cybersecurity front door lock.

When José was a teenager, they all worked for his dad, who had his own woodworking shop. His dad taught him how to be his own boss. When you are your own boss, you control your destiny. What José has seen in inequities in our society is very interesting. Employed Latinos have all been underpaid and abused in many instances and without recourse, resulting in an unjust society. Others who have made carts to sell food or who have built their own businesses have been more successful!

Arturo Loaiza‐Bonilla was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. His parents were separated early in his life and he was raised by his hardworking mother, who, as the eldest of nine children, managed to pursue a master's degree and provide him a dignified life and strong values of grit, resilience, and appreciation for the small things in life. He experienced his maternal grandfather's death from end‐stage renal disease due to lack of appropriate medical care when he was a teenager and resolved to become the first physician in his family. His grandfather told him that he believed in him and was hopeful and proud of his grandson having achieved what many other believed impossible at the age of 16. He died shortly after this encouraging talk.

Medical school in Colombia is quite expensive, and Arturo's best chance was to be accepted to the National University of Colombia, which is public, but also quite hard to get into: less than 1 percent of applicants are admitted after a single national ranked exam; few thought he would make it.

As he advanced in his education, Arturo became passionate about genomics and research, and decided to pursue the American dream. He started buying all of his medical school books in English, which were much cheaper and up‐to‐date, and borrowed over 5,000 pages of second‐hand photocopies of preparation books for the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination, while downloading another book using a now‐defunct peer‐to‐peer file‐sharing application, called Kazaa. He took a job as a website developer for his medical school, and saved the scholarship money awarded to him as one of the top two students of his class so that he could pay for the first test to make his dream come true.

After completing medical school, he worked three jobs, averaging 100 hours per week for about two years while studying for the U.S. boards. Arturo landed in Baltimore with no credit history or family support to start his residency in internal medicine. This was a journey that would take him to the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Miami, and the University of Pennsylvania.

As a second‐generation college graduate and physician in his research leadership role, he was hopeful that his daughter Natalia would share his common passion for education and betterment of their lives through dedication, emotional intelligence, and smart work. This is the care of the evolution of Latino digital intelligence.

Arturo believes academic institutions, starting from early public education, should continue to realize the importance of technology and digital solutions to improve access to knowledge and to involve their end users in the development of those tools. Many initiatives in digital health, including those focused on helping Spanish‐speaking folks, are envisioned, and developed in innovation environments like Silicon Valley. They look great in PowerPoint, but no one uses them, and millions of dollars go to waste. This is because Latinos did not have a seat at the design table.

The first step to overcome this gap between innovation and reality is that Latinos must lose our fear of trying something outside of the box. Be bold and take chances beyond your comfort zone. We need to create an entrepreneurial environment inclusive of Latinx. We must be part of incubators, and include a diverse mindset for founders, workers, and end users.

This is also true if Latinos are not to be left behind in the digital health revolution. Latinos are affected by advanced stages of cancer more often than the general population, mostly due to lack of access to screening and healthcare, and because of cultural issues. Many times, we are concerned about sharing the diagnosis with other family members, lack access to genetic counseling, and defer talking to our primary physicians when we could have detected the cancer at a curable stage. That is why Cancer Treatment Centers of America created a national campaign, called “No Esperes” in collaboration with the National Hispanic Medical Association and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, in which they aim to educate, empower, and promote a culture of early detection for Hispanic patients and family members. They demystify screening, use resources that are culturally congruent, and get folks excited about nascent technologies that use advanced imaging and liquid biopsies.

While working in academia, Arturo realized how difficult it was for cancer patients to access care in a prompt fashion, including clinical trials, and how AI, digital tools, and innovative approaches may help to bridge that gap between the Latino/Latinx community, academics, precision medicine, and social determinants of health. Given that personal experience, Arturo decided to become an entrepreneur and cofounded Massive Bio, with the vision to accelerate cancer research and inspire others to do the same in their respective fields.

Fortunately, many academic institutions and medical schools are identifying the need for a diverse class of medical students, inclusive of women and different backgrounds, such as Latinx, and African Americans. The best way to promote this inclusion effort is to praise it, highlight it, and for Latinos to excel at these opportunities, once given. Many times, it is fear of being rejected, giving up before trying, or a sense of entitlement that leads promising and likely successful applicants to think they cannot pursue their dream of becoming a physician. Arturo mentions that it imperative for the Latino community to continue being our own best advocates and empower those interested in STEM careers.

Once we identify those leaders and share their stories, we can inspire future generations to pursue their dreams. Arturo mentions that he sees this in his own family, where younger members are already in medical school or working to reach leadership roles. They are paving the way and leading by example.

Since his early years of medical training, Arturo has learned the importance of mentorship and collaboration with younger generations. At every level, from residency, post‐doctorate fellowship, faculty member, medical leader, and digital health biotechnology entrepreneur, he strived to find and sponsor promising individuals, looking to create a positive impact on our society. We need to continue creating local, regional, and nationwide networks to foster those relationships. It does not have to be that hard; Arturo emphasizes how we are all in this together, and our legacy will live on in those whom we help. That sense of cooperation is what led to our success as a species and to overcome war, famine, pandemics, and global challenges. The sky is the limit if we all work together with a common purpose and goal.

As a parent, he empathizes with the difficulties of working parents and understands the challenges of our proactive involvement in our children's education, particularly in a society that rewards individualistic behavior but has a short memory of previous challenges. The Hispanic culture is always centered around family values, collaboration, and traditions, and we need to strongly instill these beliefs in our future generations. We respect and care about our elders, we are not afraid of expressing our feelings and opinions or helping our family members in times of need, and we love to tell stories. That sense of belonging, collaboration, and shared values around our bilingual families shall be the cornerstone that keeps our children open to asking for our opinions, learning from our past errors, and capitalizing on our successes. Telling them stories of prior generations overcoming challenges they faced and encouraging them to be good citizens, love and respect themselves and others, and contribute to their own lives and society will keep them engaged and realize it is not merely good fortune, but grit, dedication, empathy, persuasion, passion for what we do, and ambition to better ourselves that bring real success.

Federico W. von Son de Fernex was born in Baja, California, and raised in Cuernavaca, a beautiful small town in the central region of México, euphonism of the Nahuatl word “Cuauhnāhuac,” which means “near the woods or surrounded by trees” (it was known as the city of the eternal spring, thanks to Alexander von Humboldt). Federico considered himself a global citizen. A young soccer athlete, he was fortunate to experience the huge contrast of living in one of the most organized and well‐structured countries, like Switzerland, and also its counterparts, like Argentina and México. After more than 11 years as a semi‐pro and pro soccer player, his decision to study medicine became very clear.

His father graduated from medical school in the 1970s and pioneered the noninvasive aesthetics field in Latin America for more than 20 years before he passed away in 2019. His grand‐ and great‐grandfathers (maternal lineage) were both renowned and successful urology surgeons, one of them the founder and the other ex‐president of the Mexican Society of Urology in the 1950s. Even with that illustrious medical lineage, Frederico never received any guidance from his father on how to make the best out of medical school (his father was very hermetic, as he was raised by a military veteran and both parents lived through civil and world wars, so feelings and bonding weren't allowed). Federico had to do the research myself, find out which universities were the top ranked in México, and determine his options after finishing his medical training. At that point, he didn't know that his paternal grandfather had started some engineering studies at MIT and that he could follow in his footsteps or continue his studies in the United States or Europe.

As a medical doctor, he realized that diversity in scientific research, drug development, therapeutics, and prevention strategies is crucial to understand and treat Mexican and Latino patients more accurately; yet, Latinos and African Americans together represent less than 4 percent of the names in available databases.

Scientific institutions and researchers have an old‐fashioned mindset, where data gatekeeping is a standard and decentralization seems to be a sweet dream.

Actually, Federico has found the perfect name for them: Scientificsaurus (from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge,” and saurus, meaning more commonly “dinosaur”).

This is a common scenario that we face every day in Latin American countries, and you can fight against it only with disruptive and inclusive thinking. Again, inclusion and coparticipation is the way to go, and if we want to understand Latinos better, we need to invite them to play the same game; no one can be left out. As a personal mission, which he feels grateful to share with his cofounder, friend, and one of the smartest people he has ever known, they decided to invite Indigenous Nations, communities, and leaders to participate in transparent and decentralized data aggregation.

This might sound very trite for Latinos immersed in entrepreneurship within the United States, but the real barrier starts with venture capital firms and angel investors. It takes three to four times longer for Latinos to raise capital than other groups (around one year to 18 months). According to a Crunchbase analysis from the past five years, only around 2.4 percent of total funding was allocated to Latino founders. The key for success relies on becoming very proactive (three to four times more than the average non‐Latino entrepreneur – statistics don't lie and Dr. Federico mentions that we need to counteract this imbalance), resilient, and to create a network of great Latinos that have already gone through the same situation. That could help in structuring important partnerships and alliances or doing warm introductions to investors and funds (use the digital tools, i.e., LinkedIn, to connect and prosper).

In Europe, they love the hard work, passion, and extreme ability they acquire in Mexico and Latin America, thanks to the high number of patients we fortunately interact with. In the end, he was accepted in the second‐ranked hospital in Helvetia at that time. The story tells itself, here is how Federico's road to success in entrepreneurship began … Yes, after all that effort, rejections, and long nights, he decided to drop out from the residency program that cost him years of sacrifice to help millions of people by innovating in healthcare. In the end, you have to follow your dream no matter what it takes, and even if you encounter hundreds of uphill battles, you need to listen to your heart and fight for it.

Irene Chavez grew up in the rural area of San Elizario, Texas, up until the age of 12. Irene's grandfather entered the United States through the Bracero program, and her dad was six years old. Thereafter, she grew up in El Paso, Texas. Irene is the fourth of eight children – six boys and two girls. Irene's father did not attend schools; instead he was self‐taught: English, grammar, and math. Irene's father had a curiosity for picking up a book and studying the subject matter on his own. Her father served in the U.S. Army during World War II and retired from the U.S. Customs service, now known as ICE. He earned a Purple Heart, which they learned about only after he died. Her father was strict, easy to anger, and often physically abusive toward all of them. Irene's mom was from Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico, and married her father, who was 14 years older. She was a homemaker and learned to cope with her difficulties in interesting ways, teaching and modeling the value of finding joy despite the situation one lives in.

Irene was the first to graduate with a university bachelor's degree and the only one to secure a masters level degree. Irene's father did not believe a girl should go to college, providing no support or encouragement. Irene's mom, on the other hand, was her inspiration, with the mantra of “Education will ensure independence from financial struggles, a controlling and abusive situation, and will offer opportunities to contribute to a better quality of life.” Irene graduated from a girl's parochial school as the valedictorian. She worked full time to pay the tuition at the University of Texas at El Paso. Irene graduated with a liberal arts bachelor's degree in political science with a minor in secondary education. Her goal was to teach American history and American government.

Irene worked with Providence Memorial Hospital as a night clerk to earn the tuition money. Little did Irene know that she would fall in love with healthcare. The digital divide in the Latinx communities underscores the reality of those who have and those who have not.

Access to high‐speed internet/network services and a device, be it a computer or smart device, is a nicety – not a “need” – for those earning only a living wage or even less. Irene's experience in El Paso, Texas, was to see the schools, churches, libraries, and Latinx community‐based organizations rally to extend high‐speed internet and computer/smart device workrooms and/or devices to Latinx communities.

Irene's experience in San José is limited and she may not be fully aware of all the efforts in place to shrink the digital divide. Her expectation is that given the presence of Silicon Valley Giants and a progressive city and county government, that high‐speed internet is readily available throughout Santa Clara County. Irene would also expect every Latinx student from elementary school through high school to have access to a computer and or smart devices. If the assessment indicates this is not the current state, she would support starting a campaign to accomplish these goals.

Irene chose healthcare management and then administration because she wanted to make a positive difference in the lives of people who need healthcare services, especially in the Latinx community, with educational resources for diabetes, hypertension, and other factors that have impacted our community. Irene wants to be a role model so that no matter what is in your past, only you control your future. Irene wants to be a role model overcoming fear and to fight the attitude of aguantate – “hold on, put up with it, and/or settle.”

Irene was inspired to have a purpose and to make a positive difference for her community, most of which was Latinx. She was inspired to make a positive difference for women's health, for the elderly, and most especially for children.

The negative health outcomes caused by the lack of access to healthcare include loss of sight, loss of digits and/or limbs, and the need for dialysis, all because of uncontrolled diabetes. Newborns might receive a diagnosis of “Failure to thrive” caused by a lack of formula. Worst is the abuse of elders and children due to alcoholism, drug abuse, or anger fueled by desperation.

Irene witnessed the abuse of health insurance policies by healthcare providers who would overtreat and/or misdiagnose people to secure more money. The many women labeled psychiatrically ill by male physicians who failed to understand menopause and/or family abuse. Irene witnessed the erosion of trust in the healthcare system, because of the communication gap, resulting in the beliefs held by the Hispanic community.

Irene mentions the fear of many Latinx folks visiting the doctor, because of the beliefs that “She/he will find something wrong with me,” or they won't go because “All they want is just to get money” or “Why go? They don't listen anyway.”

To change the narrative:

• Begin to educate in kindergarten – teach good health habits and continue the education through high school. Invest in prevention!
• Enter social contracts with famous people from sports, music, acting, and so forth to leverage their status with positive messaging and support for their communities.
• Get involved in the community. Invest in your community. Hire from your community. Promote from your community.

Face your fear and overcome it; take the risk and make the decision. Stay hungry to learn, and seek input from interesting people by asking provocative questions. Take on the most difficult job duties, become an expert and indispensable, and be present and in the room. To be noticed one must be a subject matter expert: trusted, reliable, and courageous. When Irene mentors, she loves seeing when a mentee blossoms to their full untapped potential because they believe they have been given permission to do so.

Digital health is inevitable because our youth will demand this level of medical care. Medical care is expected to be in the palm of their hand, in their home, on their refrigerator, in their bathroom, on every appliance, and so on.

With Medicare and Medicaid representing nearly half of any major counties' coverage, the demand to provide a digital/virtual experience is on us. Insurance carriers see the value of providing this level of access to their insureds for various reasons: marketability and ultimately to improve the delivery of medical care. Access to this augmented level of care has so many benefits and yet it is not without risk. Protecting your personal private healthcare information must be ensured by these systems.

Examples of the digital medical tools of the future include smart implanted devices, insulin pumps, heart stents, joint implants, orthotics, and prosthetics; smart pills designed for one's specific illness; smart GI pills to identify lesions within the intestine; smart applications to measure carbs, sugar, protein, fat, and vitamin intake; nanotech medications and inserts, and more.

The future in medicine is all about digital, and it's exciting!

Harold Fernandez grew up in Medellin, Colombia, and lived with his grandmothers because his parents were in America working as undocumented immigrants. At the age of 13, not finding a way to bring them legally to the United States, his parents made the difficult decision to smuggle him and his younger brother into America to join them. At the age of 13, he found himself on a tiny Island in the Bahamas (Bimini) waiting for a boat to pick up him, his brother, and 10 other undocumented immigrants. They waited for two weeks on this island for the weather on the ocean to improve.

Finally, on October 26, 1978, they all climbed into a small boat and made the seven‐hour trip across a corner of the Bermuda Triangle on the way to the coast of Miami. They left at midnight to avoid being detected by the American Coast Guard. Although they all thought that they would lose their lives, they made it to safety. They then caught a flight to New York and reunited with his parents to start their life in America as undocumented immigrants.

His undocumented status was his greatest obstacle to even applying to college. Harold didn't have legal documents to get into college. He was fortunate to have the support of many compassionate Americans who supported his application to get legal residency, including letters from the New Jersey senator, Bill Bradley, the New Jersey governor, Thomas Kean, and the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. After many struggles, he was able to get his legal residency and concentrate on working hard to get accepted to Princeton University and then Harvard Medical School. Harold is the first one in his family to graduate from high school and attend college.

In all aspects of our universe, it is obvious that the way we process, generate, and adapt to information is an important factor in how our Latinx community competes in the digital world. As we incorporate our community into this new paradigm, it is important that we do not forget our roots. Harold is a strong advocate for the idea that what makes us unique is also what makes us stand out. Harold explains that this is also what makes us strong. There are, of course, many things that are unique to our cultural heritage within the Latinx community, including our food, our family values, our traditions, and the most important one, in his opinion, is our language. We should continue to emphasize that, as we become more immersed in our beautiful American traditions, including all the digital developments, we do not forget that all the digital information and content is also made available in Spanish. This includes our medical education, delivery of information, and communication with our patients, both in‐person and through all digital formats. This is why Harold has worked on his own YouTube channel, El Show del Doctor Fernandez: Su Salud en Español. It is designed to inform the LatinX community about their health in Spanish and in a way that they can understand.

One of his most important activities outside the hospital is Harold's participation in his community outreach program that Northwell organizes in New York.

Harold gives a lecture titled “From Immigrant to Cardiac Surgeon.” In it, Harold shares his own story of coming to America at the age of 13 and overcoming many obstacles, including having to learn a new language, not having documents, economic struggles, discrimination from other students who would yell at him in the halls to “go back to your own country,” and not having anyone in his family who went to high school, let alone college.

But, Harold had one advantage, and at that time he didn't even know it. This was that his grandmothers had instilled in him a strong belief that with hard work everything is possible. So, when he speaks to the young students, he tells them that his story is not just his story, but it is also their story and that of their parents. He reminds them that it is important for them to believe in themselves, and he shares a quote from Oprah Winfrey: “In life you become not who you want to become, but you become, who you believe you can become.” He reminds them that when he started believing in himself, his life changed, and he was able to become a much better student. Many students in Gen Z do not believe that a career in medicine is for them because they don't believe that they can handle the academic rigors of a medical school education. Harold thinks it is important for all of us in leadership positions to do everything we can to share our story and reach out to them through all available digital platforms so they can start to believe in themselves and understand that with hard work all their dreams are possible.

There is nothing more reassuring to an ill patient in a hospital then when a doctor walks into the room and speaks to that patient in their native language. In fact, it is not just a cultural or emotional connection that forms between the patient and the doctor, but there is a lot of evidence that those patients heal better and that the results in terms of care are much better for those patients. As a Latino community, we need to demand that our elected officials and community leaders understand the power and significance of cultural diversity at every level of our society, including universities and professional schools. There is absolutely no excuse for any academic institution to fail at meeting those diversity guidelines that adequately represent our communities. In medicine and in many other industries, the results clearly show that diversity makes us stronger and is the best way to move forward.

So what are best strategies to get parents, especially Spanish‐speaking parents, involved in their child's education and helping them to focus on higher education, like medical school?

First, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that knowing two languages will only make you stronger. Both of his kids were born in America, but they learned Spanish at home as their first language. Once they started school, they both learned English quickly and without any delay in their academic progress. Many studies have shown that young kids can learn multiple languages very well at an early age. This will help them in school, in the workplace, and in the digital world as they become immersed in creating content. All parents should play an active role in encouraging their kids and teaching them to be proficient in both reading and writing Spanish.

Second, he feels strongly that parents who are involved in a child's primary education will be parents who are also involved in their kids' higher education. This has to start early. In fact, it has to start by the parent forming a relationship with their kids around a book and learning how to read. This was the goal of Harold's latest book, A Boy and a Book: Overcoming Obstacles Through the Magic of Reading (2020). The first story that Harold shares is about sitting with his mother on a sofa reading a book together. This is the most important lesson for us as parents. Teach your kids how to read, teach them how to do it well, and share with them ways in which they may fall in love with reading. This simple, but powerful skill will last with them for all of their life, and will help them greatly during higher education, including medical school.

Harold had the privilege and honor to help thousands of his patients by doing open heart surgery. “This involves getting into the chest of my patients, stopping their hearts, and fixing the arteries and the valves that are not working.” Harold is very proud and fortunate to have had some of the best results over the past 20 years in the state of New York. But one of his greatest accomplishments in medicine is yet to come, and it involves a much less invasive way of helping his patients. Over the past five years Harold has discovered the power of preventing and healing chronic diseases through nutrition. Harold is currently a strong proponent of whole food, plant‐based nutrition as the best way to prevent and reverse disease, especially cardiovascular disease. Harold has adopted this form of nutrition for himself and his family with excellent results and is very excited and energized to bring this message to his patients, and our Latinx community. He feels strongly that the high levels of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease are alarming, especially in the Hispanic community and all these conditions can be prevented and reversed if we adopt a plant‐based diet. In fact, the high level of these chronic conditions in our community is one of the reasons why we have had such a high mortality during the COVID‐19 pandemic. He is currently working on a book and on other digital platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram to reach patients with this information. Harold plans to present his ideas in both Spanish and English.

Sergio Aguilar‐Gaxiola believes that this is a unique time in our nation's history. The converging of two historic events, the COVID‐19 pandemic and systemic structural racism, are disproportionally impacting underserved communities, and if left unaddressed, the negative consequences can be long lasting. These two incidents have emerged with tremendous force and call on us to take action and achieve transformation. From a health perspective, we are witnessing a devastating impact on both our physical and mental health as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and social isolation. We are also seeing the manifestation of structural racism and differential treatment of our vulnerable communities such as farmworkers, and that has been very concerning and sobering. The demonstrations in response to the preventable killing of George Floyd created a historic mobilization of people from all walks of life—different ages, race and ethnic backgrounds, and sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI)—a formidable movement elevating justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and transformation. He remains inspired by the growing solidarity in addressing social injustice. What's been inspiring amid these two historic life‐changing events is that we've seen signs of positive change: We have seen the Supreme Court's rulings in favor of LGBTQ rights in the workplace, the protections for DACA students, and the broader reaching out of the UC System relative to affirmative action. These are extraordinary accomplishments, and we cannot help but link these rulings to the effects of the national demonstrations. What has emerged is something we have known for a long time, and that is the differential treatment of humans based on physical characteristics such as color, race, ethnicity, and SOGI. This just cannot continue to persist.

Equity is about fairness. For example, community members that need access to care may not have the necessary transportation to get to the services they need when they need them, or maybe they wish to receive services in their preferred language, or they need to be seen at different hours that align with their arduous employment schedules. Equality is about sameness – same solutions across the board, one size fits all. To effectively address disparities, we need fairness. We need to tailor solutions to the unique cultural and language needs of specific populations – it's not a matter of receiving more or less, it is about recognizing what matters most to underserved communities.

The fact is that disparities in access to care and service utilization lead to negative health consequences and ultimately a suboptimal quality of life. For this reason, we must be compelled to provide the best quality of care possible for everyone. Disparities are bad for health policy. Health policy helps us correct the misallocation of resources to the people who need them the least and who derive the least benefit. The 2002 Institute of Medicine landmark report titled “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care” introduced evidence in an unequivocal way that created a national debate on unequal treatment for underserved populations; it highlighted research that showed substantial ethnic and racial variation in quality of care. This brought disparities to the attention of the nation and showed that they exist across services and clinical settings. Health equity is a broad topic – we can look at it through language spoken, proxy measures for socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity/SOGI, and even the neighborhoods we live in.

There are many dimensions to equity. The most notable factors are place of birth and immigration status, the place and type of employment, economic and housing stability, and food security. All these factors have played a key role on the disproportionate negative impact on COVID‐19‐related excess mortality on Latinos, African American, Native American, and other underserved populations. COVID‐19 health inequities have become a huge public health challenge, as are inequities in the distribution and uptake of vaccines, particularly by those who are most impacted. We are in dire need of (1) better data that help us drive more equitable decisions in the current COVID‐19 response, (2) community‐driven solutions to pervasive and systemic COVID‐19 inequities, and (3) better preparation for long COVID.

Mario Anglada was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to a working‐class family. He studied in the public school system and was selected to attend a specialized math and science high school, which led to acceptance to the University of Puerto Rico upon graduation. After arriving in college and studying for two years, Mario decided that he was not ready to determine what his career path would be. He enlisted in the U.S. Army to give himself some time to decide on a future career. Mario spent five years in the U.S. Army, during which he was stationed in Germany and deployed to various conflict areas during his time in service. At the end of his service, Mario returned to Puerto Rico with his family, where he decided to focus his career on the field of business and enrolled in college at night while working full‐time for Procter & Gamble. During a five‐year period, he was able to earn a double major in business and management and human resources, and continue to earn an MBA in Global Management. After graduation, Mario remained in the business of healthcare with national and international positions at Johnson & Johnson, GF Health, Nestlé Health Science, and Univision Communications before founding Hoy Health.

The Latino community are avid users of technology and use the tools available to them as enablers of their content creation, usually from an artistic perspective in business or from a consumer perspective as end users. Mario believes that, as a community, Latinos haven't had the ability to see ourselves as builders of these tools, and he sees this as the key area for engagement for academia and other stakeholders, by allowing our younger generations to see themselves as the engineers, programmers, and technologists who are creators of the tools. This can be achieved by providing programs to young students, supporting them in a guided manner through their education, and providing a path that encourages appropriate risk‐taking to give them a glimpse of the opportunity of creating our own path with a start‐up or other entities that aren't necessarily the first choice for many who are culturally conditioned to take a more “traditional” steady, safe path to employment.

Mario's company, Hoy Health, was designed to address the needs of healthcare consumers at the base of the social pyramid, so his products are built to be accessible and affordable by design. Their mission is to ensure that everyone, everywhere, has access to healthcare, regardless of their economic status. Hoy Health has created an ecosystem approach to building their company, ensuring that their consumers have access to bilingual healthcare professionals at all times; access to low‐cost medications across the United States, Central/South America, and the Caribbean; and complete chronic condition support solutions that are all‐inclusive, offering a simple‐to‐follow guided path to better manage their health. During the pandemic they have partnered with leading organizations in the healthcare and technology space to make their solutions a tool for these partners to deploy to their member base. These could be a patient who is assisted in monitoring his or her health results at home or a medical practice that uses our solutions to digitize their offerings to provide telemedicine to their patients.

The Latino community should encourage the adoption of new models of care that allow healthcare providers to engage with patients, wherever the patient might be. Taking into account that under 6 percent of medical professionals are of Hispanic origin and 18 percent of the population is of Hispanic origin, we feel that technology can serve as a force multiplier, allowing our community to leverage technology to assist in supporting healthcare professionals to virtual monitor patients, making their outreach to the Latino community more effective in terms of cost, access, and ease of use. One important factor to consider is to allow the creation of a national provider license certification across all 50 states that allows medical providers to provide care across state lines. This approach would allow areas with enough providers to use technology to reach patients in areas that might lack culturally and linguistically appropriate care by providers who speak the language and understand the culture.

The Latino community has a strong emphasis in achieving the collective benefit for the family nuclear group. As such, providers who encourage cross‐family education and accountability for care will achieve better health outcomes in their patient populations. This can be as simple as including the larger group in healthcare education to enable them to learn to better support their loved one and their condition to actively encouraging group behavior change to enhance the overall health status of the family group.

Hoy Health has been built to solve the friction points of each healthcare stakeholder. This includes the healthcare provider, the patient, the family, health systems, employers, and the government. In order to support the goals of various stakeholders, they had to design the process as continuous from the start to the end of the patient journey. A big problem with the current healthcare system is the fragmentation that naturally occurs by having each party in their own silo. Having a complete solution allows them to gain stakeholder adoptions from their preferred need that can be met by increasing access, decreasing cost, simplifying complexity, or guiding someone through the complete journey.

Oscar was born in a very small town in Jalisco, Mexico. The great majority of his family and relatives were either illiterate or had at the most an elementary school education. Oscar was blessed to be a first‐generation college graduate. When he was seven years old, he began working full time in the farm and agricultural fields while attending elementary school. Oscar obtained a scholarship in order to attend the Catholic Seminary boarding junior and high school of the Dioceses of Zamora Michoacan.

While Oscar was still in elementary school, his father came to the United States in order to work in the fields of Northern California so he could support his family. Oscar, his mother, and six siblings eventually joined the father. Upon his high school graduation, Oscar and his family arrived in the San Francisco Bay area. Oscar did not speak English. He obtained a full scholarship at Saint Patrick's College Seminary. This college was the most supportive institution during his academic life. The college did not have an English as a second language program. However, Oscar was able to obtain a full scholarship and graduated in four years. Then, he obtained a Master of Sciences in clinical counseling from the California State University–Hayward. In addition, he obtained a PhD in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology–Berkeley. While obtaining his doctorate program, he encountered severe racism and discrimination. However, this made him stronger and led him into performing research, teaching, and consulting about issues of racism, and discrimination toward Latinos, and the development of programs in order to admit, retain, and graduate Latinos from college and graduate schools. Oscar founded and became faculty liaison for several Latino students' associations at several universities. Oscar became the director of multicultural affairs. He also took leadership roles such as president of the Latino faculty and staff at the University of Southern California as well as president of the California Hispanic Psychological Association. Oscar continued mentoring and supervising Latino medical students and medical residents while serving as a clinical professor at the UCSF School of Medicine. The great majority of his patients in private practice have been Latinos.

Unfortunately, there continues to be a digital divide in the Latino community. While the digital divide among cell phone and smartphone ownership continues to decrease, there still is a large gap among desktop or laptop computers ownership or internet use. Education decreases the gap. The higher the education and the higher the income, the more technology adoption and the more opportunities to be present at the decision‐making table. Young Latinos experience less digital divide than older Latinos or those who primarily speak Spanish or did not obtain a high school diploma. Latino immigrants are overrepresented in frontline pandemic‐response occupations, such as home health aides, grocery store clerks, and agricultural field workers, leaving them more exposed to COVID‐19. Foreign‐born Latinos have much lower levels of digital skills.

Telemedicine has been very practical in reaching the Latino community or those who live far away from major cities where it is very hard to find specialists. However, due to the digital divide, especially with migrant, Spanish monolingual, and elderly Latinos, the pandemic posed a great challenge. Thus, Oscar mentions relying on his cell phone to practice medicine and serve these communities.

Oscar lists three goals for his community: (1) increasing drastically the number of Latino medical students and Latino medical faculty in all medical schools, (2) increasing scholarships/fellowships for Latino medical students, and (3) promoting well‐qualified Latino professionals in all medical hospitals and medical clinics, as well as in public and private health departments.