Intro:    It's time for Conversations with MIT Health, care for the community. Here's your host, Melanie Cole.

Melanie: Welcome to Conversations with MIT Health. I'm Melanie Cole. And in today's provider profile, we have Dr. Rosemarie Roqué Gordon. She's a pediatrician and primary care provider at MIT Health. Dr. Roqué Gordon, it's a pleasure to have you join us today. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to MIT Health. Speak a little bit about your career path before, your education, where you went to school. Give us a little background on Dr. Rosemarie Roqué Gordon.

Dr Rosemarie Roqué Gordon: Well, thank you for asking. So I came to MIT Health after working in the Boston, Cambridge area at another practice for about 13 years, just doing primary pediatrics. And prior to that, I worked in Vietnam and in Laos for two years. My husband and I moved there after we finished our residencies. I did my medical residency in pediatrics at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Cornell University In New York. I went to medical school also in New York at State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Melanie: Wow. That's quite a path that you took. It's so interesting too. Tell us about your specialties or areas of expertise. What are the main areas in pediatrics, general pediatrics? What will you primarily specialize in as I introduced you as a primary care provider and pediatrician?

Dr Rosemarie Roqué Gordon: So that's a good question. So in pediatrics, we run the whole gamut from birth until really age 24. So my personal specialty is sort of the younger kids, but I see kids up until they're, you know, basically early adulthood. I'm really interested in the developmental aspects of pediatrics. So helping parents do that part of parenting, figuring out how to get your kids to cooperate with certain things that we all want our kids to do. And those are areas that I've specialized in. I also, outside of MIT Health, am involved in public health group. I'm in the Advisory Council on Public Health, affiliate member in Brookline. And there, we do more sort of like public health work that helps take care of our kids.

Melanie: So what's your philosophy of care, Dr. Roqué Gordon? What do you want patients to know about how you approach disease, wellness, care for their whole child? What would you like parents to know about you?

Dr Rosemarie Roqué Gordon: Wow. That's a good question. So I think my philosophy is that, in pediatrics, we have this wonderful opportunity to partner with parents in the care of their children, which is different than most other specialties, where it's just a doctor and a patient. When you're a pediatrician, you have this whole family that is helping to take care of the child. It's not just the doctor and patient.

I feel that, as a pediatrician, it's my main duty to help support parents in preventive care because that's probably a good 75% of what we do. Rather than fixing illnesses, we're trying to keep illnesses from happening. So I feel like I'm a helpful expert for the family in how to guide our kids in the most healthy life possible. And then I'm also there when things kind of go south and help guide parents when there is illness or if there is a need for surgery, I'm basically like the person who's going to be the quarterback and help organize and make everything happen smoothly if the child does need to get specialty care, like in a hospital. So I think that's my philosophy. I hope that was reasonable.

Melanie: Well, it was. It was lovely. And tell us what drew you to work at MIT? How do you think your background and experience, your unique background, can be used to benefit this very unique community?

Dr Rosemarie Roqué Gordon: So MIT Health basically is almost like a little neighborhood. It's like a little village of all the people that are connected to MIT, whether they're students or staff or professors. It's the whole gamut of people who are connected to MIT, but it kind of feels like it's like a little village in Massachusetts. And I really like that. It's a very supportive place to work and I'm sure that the patients feel that it's a very supportive place to get their care. So that was a very appealing element to me. This is kind of almost like a neighborhood community health center, but at major university. And the philosophy of MIT is very supportive for its workers and its patients. So as a physician, I'm really given, I would say a lot of time in which to see and take care of my patients, which unfortunately is not the case in most medical centers outside of MIT.

Melanie: And now the fun part. Tell us what you do for fun. Tell us a little bit about your family, your life outside of work.

Dr Rosemarie Roqué Gordon: Why do I do for fun? So I love to run. I run a lot. I play tennis. Sometimes I ski, but not this year because of COVID. I am married and I have two kids and we like to do a lot of things. We do board games together. That's one of our big things. We like to travel, though we haven't had a lot of opportunities to do that lately. I like to write, so sometimes I spend time on working on my own creative writing. And I'm a big reader and knitter. Those are the kind of things that I like to do.

Melanie: So now as we wrap up, what do you like about working at MIT since you have arrived there? And tell patients what you would like them to know about your practice and your ability to help them raise their child, because after all that is what our pediatricians do for us.

Dr Rosemarie Roqué Gordon: That is so true. That's exactly what I feel, that my role as a pediatrician is to help parents raise their kids and help the kids realize their potential, you know, become the kid that they want to become. I think the practice at MIT is a really warm, inviting practice. It is really truly like a little community health center, but not crazy busy. We have enough staff to really meet the needs of the families. When you call, you'll get someone to talk to you. You won't be put on hold for hours.

Our nurses know patients. They know them by name. When we see them out walking around the quad at MIT, we can greet them by name and ask them how their kids are doing. And I think that's a unique aspect to our particular practice that you're not going to see in many others places. So that's something that we can offer to families that I really treasure.

Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. Roqué Gordon, for joining us today and telling us all about yourself in this provider profile.

That concludes this episode of Conversations with MIT Health. Please visit Health.mit.edu for more information and to get connected to one of our providers. Please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast and all the other MIT Health podcasts. I'm Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for joining us today.