2025 UHF Gala Journal - Flipbook - Page 14
Special Tribute
Angela Diaz, MD, PhD, MPH
For her decades of leadership transforming
health care for adolescents and young adults
Angela Diaz, MD, PhD, MPH, has witnessed thousands of adolescents’ lives transformed
by the patient-centered care at Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center—including her own.
Angela’s first encounter with the health center was as a teenager herself. After learning
about the facility through Mount Sinai’s health careers program for high schoolers, she
decided to seek mental health care there while struggling with serious depression in
her senior year. She credits the center for “saving her life” and refocusing the dream
of becoming a doctor she had held since she was 4 years old and growing up in the
Dominican Republic.
After college and medical school, Angela returned to the Adolescent Health Center in
1984 for an adolescent medicine fellowship. In 1989, she became its third—and now
longest-serving—director.
In an impressive four-decade career, Angela cemented her position as a world-renowned
expert in pediatric health, honing the center’s services that once transformed her own life
into a model of excellence for adolescent health care that has been replicated nationwide.
The approach—which made Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center the country’s largest
program of its kind—is anchored in a simple ethos: understanding the patient.
“One of the major issues with adolescents is that I don’t think people understand them—
our approach was looking at teenagers developmentally and seeing what would be easier
for them to use these services,” Angela said. “If you ask a teenager why they come to us,
they say it is because they feel welcome, respected, connected, safe, and not judged. We
see them for who they are.”
With that patient perspective in mind, Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center’s model
hinges on removing barriers to care by integrating services in one location, all while
prioritizing patient confidentiality and privacy. Already a unique program at its founding
in 1968, it has expanded over the years to include under one roof medical, sexual and
reproductive health; behavioral and mental health; health education; and nutrition, dental,
optical, and legal services. Additionally, the center operates six school-based health
centers serving 23 Manhattan middle and high schools. Under Angela’s leadership,
