Healer fortifies son’s passion for medicine
Resident aims to be mentor, inspiration for Latino doctors
Will Mundo thought his dad was a doctor.
Growing up in a trailer park in Leadville, Colorado, Mundo watched his immigrant father treat the injuries and maladies of the largely low-income, uninsured and undocumented population in their community. He saw his father treat a woodchopper’s lacerated hand, applying pressure and coffee grounds to stop the bleeding.
It wasn’t until later in Mundo’s life that he realized his father never went to medical school or college. He was a healer who used his knowledge of traditional Mexican medicine and first aid to help a neighborhood in need.
“That’s where I first had that image of what a doctor is,” Mundo said. “From there, it just blossomed. It became a dream and then a goal and, shortly after that, it became reality.”
Mundo, a child to two Mexican immigrants and a first-generation college graduate of the University of Colorado Denver, is in the second half of his residency in Denver Health’s emergency medicine program. The 29-year-old knows his path to medicine and his future career as a doctor are fortified by his culture every step of the way.
Even as a child, Mundo noticed the disparities that made it feel like a career in medicine was stacked against him. He attended school in a district known at the time for its wellbelow-average graduation rates and lower test scores. Yet about 30 miles up the road in Vail, Colorado, Mundo said, it was a totally different story.
“A lot of wealthy people live in those communities and with the property taxes funding the schools, you can just see the disparities,” he said. “It was a bumpy ride.”
Inspired by his father, Mundo knew he wanted to go into medicine, but no one in his family knew much about college or how to get there. Luckily, Mundo said, his family was supportive of him, and he reached out for help from local mentors and educators.
“I had the support system available to be able to counteract all those negative forces trying to maintain the status quo,” he said.
Mundo became a lifeguard at age 16 and learned first aid. Next, he earned his wilderness first responder
certificate and then his emergency medical technician certification.
Mundo graduated from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in 2022. An interest in health equity and learning about the worse health outcomes marginalized people often experience made him vow to make a difference as a doctor.
“While Will has seen extraordinary results because of his hard work and determination to receive an education and give back to his family and community, so many people can relate to Will’s story and experiences,” said Marie Williams, University of Colorado Denver’s vice chancellor of marketing and communications. “That’s because he represents what CU
Denver is all about. From being a first-generation American growing up in Colorado and the first person in his family to attend college, to earning multiple degrees and actively making his community healthier, he shows the possibilities of what CU Denver can help students achieve.”
According to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center, Hispanic adults are less likely than other Americans to have health insurance and receive preventive medical care. Reasons for this disparity include language and cultural barriers, as well as economic barriers like higher levels of poverty among Hispanic people, particularly recent immigrants, the researchers found.
Mundo now works as an emergency medicine resident at Denver Health’s language and interpretation office and is participating in a mandatory training program about offering language services and working with translators for patients.
Mundo remembers acting as a translator at his grandmother’s doctor appointments as a child and feeling the pressure of translating important medical information without understanding adult conversations.
“The hope is for patients to be able to communicate with their doctors and tell them what’s going on rather than relying on a little kid or just not being able to communicate at all,” he said.
Mundo hopes to one day work at a trauma center. He wants to be a mentor and inspiration for other aspiring Latino doctors.
Only 7% of all physicians and surgeons in the United States are Hispanic, according to Pew, compared to making up roughly 19% of the nation’s population.
“A lot of people doing the work to help reduce health disparities are minority people,” Mundo said. “And we need this work. If we don’t, who else is going to do it? We need new ideas, we need people to challenge the way that things have been done in the past. One easy way to do it is increasing representation or diversity — socioeconomic diversity, gender diversity and thinking about different types of abilities, as well.”