12/03/2025
The desire to help others goes back to when Ashoo Rao, M.D. was three years old and watched her parents take care of their patients.
Dr. Rao’s mother, an obstetrician and gynecologist in India, cared for the underserved population and moved to the U.S. in 1966 to be a high-risk OB/GYN consultant for Northwest Ohio Hospital. Her father served as an army physician and family practitioner.
Dr. Rao attended medical school in India where she met her husband. In 1980, the couple moved to the United States, and Dr. Rao completed her residency at University of Illinois before moving to Texas. She worked at Kaiser for eight years and admitted many patients to Cook Children’s. At the time, most Medicaid patients did not have a primary care physician, so all physicians were on call.
“When we discharged patients, we didn’t have anywhere to send them for the follow-up care they needed,” Dr. Rao said. “The neighborhood health centers that Cook Children’s started have been a meaningful addition to help us continue caring for children and families close to home.”
In 1996, Dr. Rao worked in the first Cook Children’s neighborhood health center – a 500-square-foot mobile building on a playground. “We have come a long way since then with nine neighborhood health centers serving the underserved,” Dr. Rao said.
Dr. Rao was determined to work at the neighborhood health center, ensuring every patient had a primary care home and referrals to specialists. She promoted immunizations, well checkups and other issues like mental health or speech therapy. Throughout her 29-year career at Cook Children’s, Dr. Rao has seen many advancements such as the change from paper to electronic records. Dr. Rao said EPIC is linked to specialists, Emergency Department and Urgent Care visits which allow for continuity of care as pediatricians are able to look up labs and imaging.
Dr. Rao is thankful for the Cook Children’s vision to open the neighborhood health centers and sees it as the hospital’s ongoing legacy. Thank you for 29 inspiring and life-changing years at Cook Children’s! We are so grateful for you.
To learn more about Dr. Rao’s incredible story, visit: https://tinyurl.com/5vfeb8f8
