Félix Manuel Chinea, MD on addressing health disparities, staying grounded and finding presence.
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Photo of Félix Manuel Chinea, MD standing with their hand in their pocket, looking at the camera, wearing a striped T-shirt, pants and glasses, standing in lush green ivy against a grey concrete wall. Photo credit: Cornell Watson (@cornwhizzle).
Shoutout to Twitter for connecting me to thoughtful, inspiring people that are approaching DEI work with intention and grace. One of those people is Félix Manuel Chinea, MD (he/him/él), who I became connected to after Thelma, our social lead, directed us to his tweet about the use of Latine and Latinx. I slid into his DMs to start a conversation about his work at Doximity, the role of data in DEI, and his hopes for the industry as it unfolds.
Tell me about your career path. How did you end up working in the field of DEI today?
Similar to others, my path from student leadership into medicine then DEI within health tech was non-linear. As a Puerto Rican who grew up in the mainland U.S. (mostly in the South), I was always in search of community and a sense of belonging. This led to my deep involvement in Latine* student organizations starting from college then into medical school. Through those experiences, I was steeped in conversations about social justice, racial identity, health disparities, and intersectionality as well as given the opportunity to develop leadership and organizing skills. These roles have provided me invaluable tools and transferable skills that I continue to develop.
My decision to become a medical doctor was to help be part of the solution in addressing health disparities across Black and Latine communities. Frustrated with the slow nature and traditional culture of academic medicine, coupled with my own experiences of marginalization, I decided that I wanted to make that impact within health tech which brought me to Doximity.
As with many organizations, the murder of George Floyd was really a turning point for us. With a few of my colleagues, we organized and took action to create a space for marginalized folks at Doximity. From formalizing employee resource groups to hosting health equity-focused speakers, we helped start meaningful change. Additionally, we were pleased to have the immediate and ongoing support of leadership, who also took the initiative to establish a more formal DEI structure company-wide. That structure is what ultimately led to the development of my current position. Though unplanned, my recent transition into a formal DEI role within health tech has felt like it’s where I’m supposed to be.
*Please refer to my previous Twitter thread for the reasoning of why I use Latine.
You’re currently DEIB Manager at Doximity, a professional medical network for physicians. How do you view the role of equity and inclusion in healthcare?
With over one million members, Doximity is the largest network of healthcare professionals. In addition, our Video Dialer telehealth tool has been used for over one million patient visits. For these reasons, our approach has been to not only become a more equitable and inclusive company for our employees, but for our members and community as well. As a professional medical network, this means amplifying and ensuring underrepresented physician voices are heard as we build products to support all of medicine and creating opportunities for underrepresented folks in both medicine and technology.
In addition to supporting our members and community, we recognize the impact our products and clinical tools have on clinicians and their patients. While many may think of technology solutions as objective and unbiased, recent clinical studies have demonstrated how these products often amplify the biases of their creators or conditions and can further exacerbate health inequities. With this understanding, I believe it is important to use DEI principles in the advancement of digital health equity. By building diverse teams, fostering an inclusive culture, and implementing equitable product design frameworks, we can develop solutions that positively impact communities.
Through intentionally inclusive cultures, we’re able to truly value the lived experiences of diverse teams where underrepresented employees are able to influence the direction of products that will ultimately impact their own communities. By co-designing products and iterating to improve accessibility, I believe we can be part of the solution in making digital health more equitable and inclusive.
I can imagine that, at times, this work can be stressful. How are you staying resourced as the work unfolds?
Before providing a direct answer, I’d like to highlight your use of the word “unfolds.” I believe it’s important to understand that as this work matures, it continues to unfold new opportunities for equity-centered growth. DEI efforts are not a short-term solution and are most effective when used as a partner across all business units.
Understanding there is always work to be done and being married to a psychologist (who often gently nudges me in the right direction), I’ve made it a priority to seek regular therapy and spend 5-10 minutes a day meditating. Being grounded and present is really important when leading DEI initiatives because it regularly calls for both empathy and strategic thinking while also testing your context switching abilities. So making sure I am able to show up fully definitely requires prioritizing wellness and unlearning the myth of productivity, which is an ongoing process for my own growth.
Aside from what I do individually, it’s also been really important for me to find community. Since I see my role as something that sits at the junction of DEI, health tech, and health equity, it’s allowed me to find multiple resources that have been beneficial. Whether it’s my colleagues at Doximity, the Onboard Health and The Filament communities, or connecting with like-minded professionals on Twitter, I am grateful to always have someone that I can reach out to for support, no matter the topic.
You’ve spoken about the role of data-driven decisions in people strategies. How do you balance thoughtful data while maintaining a level of trust and safety?
For me, balancing thoughtful data with employee trust and safety are ultimately dependent on one another. Without employee trust and safety, folks may not feel comfortable providing us their self-identified race, ethnicity, or LGBTQIA+ status. Without this data, it’s difficult to tell an accurate story about employees from marginalized communities. While building that initial level of trust with these employees can involve policies, programming, and resources aimed at serving them, we want to ensure that we’re creating an ongoing process of measuring employee engagement and sentiment for folks from these communities as well.
By taking this thoughtful approach, we hope that the initial trust built with employees will create an environment where they feel safe in sharing their self-identification. This ultimately gives more context to our existing people data and provides us the opportunity to further build on that level of trust by improving our ability to center equity and impact those most marginalized in our decision making.
What is your hope for the future of DEI?
What has excited me about starting a formal DEI role is the opportunity to use my knowledge around social justice, identity, health disparities, and intersectionality to make a difference in digital health. My hope for the field is to improve our ability to have more nuanced conversations around these topics and continue our growth in demonstrating the functional application of historical and social context to systems.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve learned so much from leaders such as Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, Michelle MiJung Kim, and Heather McGhee, who have pushed the field to become more effective in both improving our understanding of racial equity, social justice and intersectionality, as well as communicating urgency and functional application of these concepts. It is important for DEI professionals to continue our conceptual learning around zero sum thinking, racialized identities, and white supremacy culture, but equally important to step out of the conceptual and be effective in changing policies, practices, and products. Doing this requires an understanding of business goals, metrics, and incentives so that we can build trust and relationships with leaders to communicate effectively why centering equity is of personal, organizational, and societal interest.
This work is difficult, especially when coming from an impacted community myself, but it’s also a privilege and opportunity to be able to effect change within my sphere of influence. By deepening our knowledge, holding nuanced conversations, and communicating how we can functionally apply theoretical concepts of equity, my hope is that we can embrace a future that sees this work as less charity and more necessity.
Félix is a Puerto Rican military brat raised in the South and currently growing roots in Durham, North Carolina with his amazing wife, Raha, and lovable dog, Âbi (aw-bee), which means blue in Farsi.
He’s a medical doctor by training with expertise in health disparities, health equity, and clinical research. Through this work, he highlighted the need for disaggregated data within the Latine community to address disparities in prostate cancer outcomes. Similar to many BIPOC physicians, he felt that academic medicine was not aligned with him thriving and impacting healthcare in the way he wanted.
Seeing the tech industry as a potential solution, he made his way into digital health. Félix’s experience with Black and Latine medical student organizations and health equity work has allowed him to transfer his knowledge and skills to make a positive impact in private industry and digital health. Whether it’s courageous conversations with senior leaders, organizing employee resource groups, or discussing equitable product design, he has always been a persistent and thoughtful advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Taking on a more formal DEI role in health tech represents over 10 years of learning, organizing, outreach, and strategy.