Sanjeev Arora MBBS, MD

Dr. Sanjeev Arora has seen many patients with complex needs, but his professional interests germinated many years earlier. Growing up in India with a father who worked to eradicate small pox and a mother who worked as an ob/gyn with disadvantaged populations, Dr. Arora witnessed from a young age the impact of bringing good health care to underserved communities. Following completion of medical school in India, and clinical training in the U.S., Dr. Arora focused his efforts on the prevention of gastrointestinal cancers and hepatitis C. In 1993, Dr. Arora began working as section chief of gastroenterology and associate professor of medicine at UNM, where he provided care to many low‐income patients with chronic conditions. A large number of these patients were diagnosed with hepatitis C, and faced numerous barriers that made regular care nearly impossible – including an eight‐ month wait for an appointment, the location of the hospital hundreds of miles from rural communities, and having to make as many as 12‐18 visits during one course of treatment.   While many of these rural settings had local health care centers, few had providers who were hepatitis C experts. Dr. Arora sought a better way to ensure that the nearly 30,000 New Mexicans with the disease had convenient access to specialty care by empowering rural providers to treat these patients in their own towns. In 2003, he started a pilot program to connect hospital‐based hepatitis specialists to rural and prison‐based primary care providers. Through telephone and video conferencing, specialists shared their clinical knowledge and expertise with community‐based providers, and helped co‐manage their patients.