When he’s not seeing patients or laboring over administrative chores, Dr. Rodney G. Hood pursues a decades-long mission to help improve medical care for African-Americans and to recruit more blacks into the profession.

“Health care for African-Americans is much worse than any other group in America,” says Hood, who is managing partner at CareView Medical Group in San Diego. He is a past president of the National Medical Association, the organization representing more than 26,000 African-American physicians and their patients.

He says the black community has suffered greatly because of the disparity between health care provided to African-American and white populations. “Studies show that even when they have the same kind of insurance and the same access to medical help, when they go to physicians they are treated differently,” he says.

Hood, the first African-American postgraduate to complete a residency in internal medicine at the University of California San Diego Medical Center, has lectured extensively on the subject and believes this disparity is rooted in racism. “One of the things I talk about is defining racism.

“Most people, when they hear that, think of the Ku Klux Klan and burning crosses, but I’m talking about institutionalized racism, the policies and procedures and cultural biases and beliefs that are practiced that perpetuate poor health care in the black community. San Diego is not any worse or better than any other place in the U.S. It’s something that permeates the system. That’s what the statistics show.”

Hood, 57, a native of Boston, has been in private medical practice for more than 25 years. He works with three other physicians at CareView Medical Group on Euclid Avenue. His wife, Robyn, is the office manager. They have a daughter, Ariannah, who is 10. Hood has two other children from a previous marriage. Nedra, 27, just graduated from medical school and is in her first year in urology residency at Emory University. Kamal, 26, graduated two years ago from UC Berkeley with a degree in engineering and computer science.

Hood spent his presidency of the National Medical Association advocating for better health care for the black community and for the recruitment of more African-Americans into the medical profession. He has published several articles in the Journal of the National Medical Association. Hood says he sees an average of 20 to 25 patients a day at his group practice, but spends about 40 percent of his time dealing with his responsibilities as managing partner.

— Manny Cruz