Research Profile: Miguel Marino, Ph.D.  

I'm a biostatistician embedded in a Family Medicine department, which confuses people at statistics conferences and impresses people at medicine conferences. So, it more or less evens out. I use statistical methods and electronic health records to study health disparities, health policy, and healthcare delivery, with a particular focus on Latino communities receiving care in primary care settings and community health centers. My work spans cancer prevention, health insurance coverage, chronic disease management, and the social determinants that shape all of it. 

I grew up in California as a first-generation Mexican American, studied mathematics at UCLA, then headed to Harvard for my PhD in biostatistics. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard School of Public Health, I joined OHSU Family Medicine in 2012. Thirteen years later I'm still here, still happy. I've fully embraced Portland, the food, the fishing, and the culture. The Lakers fandom I keep mostly to myself. It's just safer that way, and frankly it's taught me resilience. 

I co-lead the PRIMER Center (with Dr. John Heintzman) focused on health equity in Latino communities, and running a federally funded study on telemedicine and diabetes care in Latinos. But the portfolio is broader than that. Across my work I'm also studying opioid use disorder treatment, smoking cessation, HIV prevention, and worker safety in rural hospitals. The common thread isn't a single disease or population. It's a commitment to understanding how healthcare policy and delivery reach, or fail to reach, the people who need them most. 

In 2020, the National Academy of Medicine selected me as one of only ten Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine nationally. In 2022, they elected me as a full member. A kid from California who loved math and basketball, doing work on behalf of communities that look like the one he grew up in, and somehow ending up in one of medicine's most prestigious institutions for it. That still catches me off guard in the best possible way. But I'd be telling half the story if I didn't mention the colleagues in Family Medicine who shaped that journey. The body of work we've built together over the years is what made any of that recognition possible. 

I’ve stayed in Family Medicine honestly for the same reason a good fishing spot keeps you coming back. The conditions are just right. The colleagues are brilliant and genuine, the mission is meaningful, and the work keeps evolving in ways that still surprise me after thirteen years. Family Medicine has always oriented itself toward health equity, and the communities most often overlooked, and that aligns with everything that drove me into this field. I found the perfect spot, and unlike fishing, I'm actually happy to tell people where it is. 

In the next 5-10 years, I’m hoping for 3 things to happen in this field.  

• First, health equity becomes truly foundational to how we conduct and evaluate research. Not a talking point to be threatened or dismantled by outside forces, but an irreversible standard.  

• Second, primary care researchers claim their seat at the table across disciplines like statistics, AI, and health policy, rather than waiting to be invited. We have the data, the populations, and the questions. It's time the rest of academia figured that out.  

• Third, and I say this with complete sincerity, AI does my job but I still get paid. (That's a joke. Mostly.) But seriously, what I actually want is for primary care researchers to stop chasing other fields' trends and start setting their own. Family Medicine deserves to be followed, not forgotten, and frankly, invested in. The returns would surprise people. 

Lasty, I’d like to mention that the most important research questions aren’t always coming from the most prestigious places. They're coming from community health centers, from underserved populations, from first-generation scientists asking questions about communities that look like their own. That's where I live professionally, and the PRIMER Center is the fullest expression of that, bringing together researchers, clinicians, and community partners to move beyond documenting disparities and toward actually eliminating them. I wouldn't trade any of it for anything. Well. Maybe for lifelong Lakers season tickets. But that's it.