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Chief Physician Executive | Eskenazi Health Center West 38th Street and Medical Director of Lifestyle Health and Wellness | Eskenazi Health
Dr. Daniel Pino wants people to be healthy—and he works toward that goal in two positions with Eskenazi Health. The health care center where he serves as physician executive is part of an extensive campaign to help reduce the barriers to health equity its patients face. As medical director of the Lifestyle Medicine program, he helped establish a nationally recognized program offering lifestyle evidence-based practices for the management and prevention of chronic disease. “It’s important that we understand what it means to be healthy and how we can get to a place of living well,” he says.
Getting here: Pino came to Indianapolis through a residency match and fell in love with the city and Eskenazi Health. His resident clinic was at Eskenazi’s North Arlington location on the east side, where he “learned about the fullness of care that exists in federally qualified health centers.” When it came to finding a job, he was tempted to go back to Texas, “but I couldn’t ignore the work that was being done here at Eskenazi Health.” His first job was overseeing urgent care.
First job: Working at an after-school program. “Most of the children were from immigrant families. It was there that I fell in love with community and working with families and learned that most of the difficulties we walked through were health-related. It inspired me to become a doctor.”
Givebacks: Board and executive committee member, Westside Community Development Corp.; member, Jump IN Executive Council
Influential moment: When Eskenazi’s Lifestyle Health and Wellness Center started, Pino was talking to participants about how medications help high cholesterol. In one session, he saw that his message wasn’t getting through, so he changed his approach. “It was then that I realized how often I miss what’s important and how I might reframe the context to what matters most. … It’s made me a better doctor and a healthier person.”•
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