Daniel Diaz, DO, thinks everyone deserves a second chance. As the son of Mexican immigrants, he witnessed firsthand how a fresh start can make a positive difference in the lives of individuals and families. Yet it’s not only his parents’ second chance in the United States that shaped him. It also was his own second chance.
That chance came at age 29, when Dr. Diaz finally started college—for the second time.
“I was the first in my family to go to college, but I wasn’t the first to graduate. That was my mom,” says Dr. Diaz, whose mother instilled in him the value of education from an early age. A teacher’s aide and guidance counselor, she believed in education so strongly that she decided late in life to go to college—after her son had already paved the way. She started at community college in her 40s, then earned her bachelor’s degree and eventually her master’s.
“My mother really pushed education,” Dr. Diaz says. “and because of that, I ended up going to college right out of high school.”
Shortly after he started college, however, Dr. Diaz was forced to leave. “I didn’t know how to be a college student,” he says. “I didn’t know how to study and be responsible. I didn’t know how to be away from home. Growing up, everything I did was with family. I come from a large Mexican family with lots of aunts and uncles and cousins, and we spent all our time together. I didn’t know how to be away from them, and because I grew up in a neighborhood that was predominantly Latino and went to a school that was predominantly white, there was a lot of culture shock. Because of all that, I didn’t do well, and I was actually kicked out.”
For nearly a decade after that, Dr. Diaz worked in sales and retail. Then, in his mid-20s, he tore a ligament in his knee playing sports with friends. Inspired by his own recovery, made possible with surgery and rehab, he decided to go back to school to become a physical therapist. When he became interested in biology during his last semester, he had the idea to go to medical school.
“I applied on a whim,” says Dr. Diaz, who initially pursued family medicine before pivoting to sports medicine, ultimately graduating with a dual certification in both. “I grew up being really active and played every sport I could get my hands on. Because of that and my experience being injured, sports medicine just seemed to fit.”
Today, Dr. Diaz is the medical director of sports medicine at AltaMed Health Services, a community-based provider of health care to uninsured and underinsured patients in Southern California, including those in Latino, multiethnic, and other underserved communities.
“I wanted to be an advocate for people who look like me and talk like me,” explains Dr. Diaz, who says sports medicine isn’t available in the health deserts where many disadvantaged families live. At AltaMed, he’s had the opportunity to change that, delivering critical musculoskeletal care to injured people who often rely on their bodies to do physically demanding jobs that put food on their families’ tables.
A big part of Dr. Diaz’s job is education. He teaches medical residents, for example, and recently started a sports medicine fellowship program, the goal of which is teaching future sports medicine doctors how to deliver care to vulnerable populations. His passion for those and other education initiatives created an opportunity for Dr. Diaz to join The Chicago School’s Board of Trustees in 2023.
“The mission of The Chicago School, embracing diversity and putting mental health at the forefront, is very much in line with my own values,” Dr. Diaz says. “That and my passion for education made this a perfect opportunity.”
Dr. Diaz was also interested in The Chicago School’s plans to establish an osteopathic medical school, the proposed Illinois College of Osteopathic Medicine at The Chicago School. “I’m really excited about the connection between The Chicago School’s psychology department and the osteopath school, because we can no longer afford to practice medicine in a silo,” he says. “Mental health is a big component of what we’ve been missing in medicine, so it’s going to be invaluable to have medical school graduates who can work together with mental health professionals in a multidisciplinary fashion.”
Also invaluable will be the example Dr. Diaz sets for students, many of whom are seeking the same kind of second chance to learn and prosper that he had.
“So many students come in with the same background that I come from,” Dr. Diaz says. “They’re going to be asking themselves, ‘Is this the right place for me?’ When they see my name on the board, where I come from and what I’ve done, I hope it speaks to them.”