“Our family wasn’t rich, but we didn’t want for anything,” says Dr Palenzuela by way of introduction. In 1950s Cuba, her father drove a taxi and her mother was a homemaker, raising two daughters—one now an economist and the other a top pediatric cardiologist. In many ways, Dr Palenzuela’s career rode the wave of social change that swept Cuba beginning in 1959. Like many others, time and again she stepped up to the plate, and in 1986, she became a founder of one of the Cuban health system’s premier institutions: the William Soler Children’s Heart Center, a tertiary facility in Havana. There, to this day, she balances multiple responsibilities—as coordinator of the National Pediatric Cardiology Network, head of the Center’s Quality Assurance Program and lead professor of the annual National Certifi cate Course in Pediatric Cardiology. MEDICC Review spoke with her between phone calls, meetings and patient consults.
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