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Back when Ana M. Viamonte Ros, M.D. ’83, M.P.H., was earning her medical degree at the Miller School, she regularly made time to work with programs that delivered health care to Miami’s homeless population.

The medical needs of society’s less fortunate have always been a priority and a passion of Viamonte Ros, who is now ideally situated to impact the issue. Last year Governor Charlie Crist appointed her secretary of the Florida Department of Health and also designated her as the state’s first surgeon general.

The offer to assume those posts surprised Viamonte Ros. At the time, she was working for Armor Correctional Health Services, a physician-owned, Coconut Creek concern that manages health care delivery in six large prisons in Florida and three in Virginia.

“Individuals who were close to the governor and knew of my interest in public health and volunteerism forwarded my resume,” says Viamonte Ros, who has an apartment across the street from her Tallahassee office. Her interest in public health led her to earn her Master of Public Health in 2005 from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Now that she’s Florida’s health care czar, Viamonte Ros’s foremost priority is a program that dispatches medical workers door-to-door within the 14 Florida counties having the highest percentages of uninsured citizens. The program, which includes Miami-Dade County, aims to determine if state residents without health care insurance are eligible for programs such as Medicaid, Viamonte Ros explains.

“The medical workers will also ascertain the health needs of those they’re working with, along with the best facility for dispensing medical attention,” says Viamonte Ros, who oversees a $2.8 billion budget and more than 200 health clinics scattered throughout Florida.

Over the course of her medical career, Viamonte Ros has worked with a medical outreach program affiliated with Camillus House in Miami. She’s also gone on medical missions benefitting prisoners in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica.

Viamonte Ros says inmate health care, both in the United States and abroad, is vitally important. “Ninety percent of inmates are released back into the community,” she explains. “If we fail to work with them in terms of their health care and related behaviors, it could imperil the communities they’re released into.”

The mother of two grown children, Viamonte Ros was raised in northeast Miami after her parents left Cuba in 1960. In addition to receiving her M.D. from UM, she also received her undergraduate degree in biology from the University. In the course of running the Department of Health, Viamonte Ros says she’s been in regular contact with her medical school alma mater. “I’ve been visiting the Ryder Trauma Center on an initiative to connect all the trauma centers across the state through telehealth,” she says. “And I’ve been to The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.

“I think there will be great opportunities going forward to work closely with the Miller School.”