Education
Dr. José Luís (Joe) Calderón, MD, was conferred the degree of Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School. He is an honors graduate of the University at Albany, NY (UAlbany), where he was ranked in the top 10% in science and mathematics nationally in his junior year, among U.S. and international students taking the Medical College Admissions Test administered by the American Association of Medical Colleges. As a freshman at Harvard Medical School, in keeping with his pledge to practice among the poor, he enlisted in the U.S. National Health Service Corps, by which he signed a four-year commitment to practice medicine in medically underserved communities. During his freshman and sophomore years at Harvard, Dr. Calderón was elected Class Representative, appointed Chairman of Harvard Medical School’s Orientation Sub-committee for the Class of ’82, elected Harvard Medical School Class President, and was awarded an externship by the American Society of Anesthesiologists to train at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital Medical Center, NY.
After graduating from Harvard Medical School with a concentration in critical care, Dr. Calderón opted to complete post-graduate medical training in the field of Family Medicine, at Kings County Hospital/Downstate Medical Center, Central Brooklyn, where he grew up as a child. Contrary to advice from the medical school’s dean of students to seek residency training at a program associated with a more prestigious medical school, Dr. Calderón chose to train in that poverty-stricken, medically underserved population, having an infant mortality rate that was greater than many underdeveloped third world nations. He purposefully did this at the time when Central Brooklyn was the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Dr. Calderón was told by the same dean of students that he was wasting a Harvard Medical School education by choosing to go to Central Brooklyn. With unwavering conviction, Dr. Calderón responded, “The poor deserve Harvard educated doctors as much as anyone, and perhaps more so.”