Ciro V. Sumaya, MD, MPHTM, is a bilingual (English-Spanish) native of Brownsville, Texas. A Phi Beta Kappa and high honors graduate of The University of Texas at Austin in 1962, he received his medical degree in 1966 from The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He completed a rotating internship at The University of Southern California-affiliated Los Angeles County General Hospital and then served in the U.S. Air Force as a General Medical Officer. Following a pediatric residency at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia from 1969-1971, Sumaya completed a dual pediatric infectious disease postgraduate fellowship and Master in Public Health and Tropical Medicine degree at Tulane University School of Medicine and School of Public Health, respectively, in 1973. He began his academic medical career at the School of Medicine of The University of California at Los Angeles, followed by The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA). Between 1973 and 1990, he immersed himself in the traditional academic mode of medical research, teaching, and service.
Sumaya's biomedical research activities, principally wet-laboratory type with some clinical overlap, saw him emerge as a leading physician-scientist in viral infections in children. This led to the publication of 78 peer-reviewed original articles and invited articles or editorials in addition to 26 invited book chapters. His comprehensive investigations of infectious mononucleosis in children has been a major contribution to the medical literature. These virological research efforts were supported by the National Institutes of Health, Department of the Army, multiple pharmaceutical companies, and private foundations. Based on these research efforts, Sumaya has been invited to make numerous scientific presentations and serve on distinguished research and advisory committees/study groups.
In the mid 1980s he began to become increasingly involved in leadership roles in large scale health research and education program development, academic-to-community outreach efforts, health professions workforce and policy, and other health issues, with a particular emphasis on underserved populations. With his entry to the Medical Dean's office at UTHSCSA in 1986, he embarked initially on expanding the continuing medical education programs, including AIDS education and training, for health professionals in South Texas and other parts of the State. This was followed by the spearheading of efforts to link more closely the medical school and health science center with community and societal needs. Representative examples of such efforts included his role in developing the federally funded Area Health Education Center (AHEC) of South Texas, a major comprehensive project to improve the health professions capacity (physicians, dentists, nurses, allied health professionals) of this very impoverished region of the country. Sumaya initiated the early comprehensive planning strategies for a telecommunications network in South Texas reaching rural and remote sections of the region with long distance learning and patient management capabilities.
He also directed the efforts to establish an innovative research center, apparently the first of its type in the country, that directly linked health science center resources in research and education to a focus on major regional health problems. Under Sumaya's direction, this Center leveraged $2.2 million startup state appropriations with an additional $15 million from other sources over the first 4 years of existence.
His leadership secured the award to UTHSCSA of one of the initial federally
funded Medical Treatment Effectiveness Research Centers that serves as a
research, training, and dissemination resource to improve medical outcomes and
practice costs.
The collective programs and partnership developed in South Texas through the
leadership of Sumaya laid the foundation for the Regional Academic
Health Center
now established in the region.
In 1993 Sumaya received a federal appointment to the Presidential Task Force on National Health Care Reform. During this three month commitment in Washington, D.C., he participated intensely in the debates and policy decisions of the country's health care reform issues such as the health professions workforce, health benefits, health service delivery systems, and academic health center roles, among others.
In 1994 Sumaya was appointed by President Clinton to serve as Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an operating division (as the FDA or NIH) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. HRSA, through its $3+ billion annual budget provides leadership and management oversight to assure the development and access of quality primary health care services (particularly to the disadvantaged/underserved, maternal-child, and rural populations); state trauma systems; national transplant networks; health care systems for other special populations (ie, AIDS patients); and the training of the health professions workforce that meets the nation's health needs.
As HRSA Administrator, Sumaya spearheaded a comprehensive organizational restructuring of the agency, successfully championed substantial increases to the annual budget from the U.S. Congress, opened negotiations with the managed care industry in health professions training and in service delivery for safety net populations, developed innovative initiatives with academic health centers/health professions organizations in health professions training and education, increased internal research and analytical activities, and modernized information technology and management systems.
In March 1997, the Secretary of Health and Human Services appointed Sumaya as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health to lead the interagency initiative on the Future of Academic Health Centers. This initiative involving government agencies, the academic community, foundations, managed care organizations, health organizations, and other private/public sector stakeholders led to a comprehensive document containing major policy recommendations for federal direction in supporting the essential products (education, research, service) of the national academic health center enterprise.
In December 1997, Sumaya was appointed founding Dean of the new School of Rural Public Health at Texas A&M University System Health Science Center and holder of the Cox Endowed Chair in Medicine. This school is the first of its type in the country, containing a mission of improving public health in general and rural health in particular. With the assumption of the founding deanship by Sumaya, the School now has a departmental and administrative structure; three master degree and two doctoral degree programs; student body of 220 and full time faculty of 54; extramural research activities that include a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation national program office for exercise in the elderly ($18 million), federal Rural Health Research Center ($2 million), and Community Health Research Program ($5 million). The School has secured $17.3 million in state funds for the construction of a new building for the School; and full accreditation from the Council on Education for Public Health is pending. The School also took an aggressive stance in quickly developing a 9-site distance education Master of Public Health degree program located in East, Central, and South Texas; and has formed a regional campus in McAllen, Texas, a U.S.-Mexico border community. As dean, he serves on the Executive Committee, the governing body of the newly reorganized Texas A&M University System Health Science Center. As the Cox Endowed Chair in Medicine he has expanded the research infrastructure and activities, principally clinical and health services research that involves collaborations among the medical school, Scott & White teaching hospital and the public health school.
As during the earlier research years, he has continued to have scholarly
articles published - biomedical as well as those that are health policy, health
administration, and public health oriented. He has received numerous honors and
awards including the Ashbel Smith Distinguished Alumnus Award from The
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston,
Distinguished Fellow of the Public Health Policy Advisory Board in Washington, D.C.,
Juan Carlos Finlay Award from the U.S. Public Health Service, and Board Trustee
of Ascension Health, the largest nonprofit health system in the country. For
leisure, Sumaya enjoys collecting Latin American art, maintains classical piano
skills, and is writing a historical fiction novel based on South
Texas events.