In early July, Dar Salud health clinics will become a network of nonprofit clinics called LifeDOC.

It’s the legacy Dr. Pedro Velasquez wants to leave the city where his son was treated at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and where research that grew out of his faculty appointments in medicine and nursing at University of Tennessee Health Science Center became his life’s work.

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Dar Salud now has two clinics, at 1068 Cresthaven Road and 6063 Mt. Moriah. Two additional sites are planned by the end of the year in Whitehaven and Orange Mound. 

In another four to five years, the team that created Dar Salud, including Velasquez’s son, Pedro Velasquez Jr., who is chief operating officer, and longtime director of clinical practice Dr. Claudia Neira, expect the nonprofit network will have 10 clinics, serving the chronically underserved people in Memphis.

“Being a nonprofit will put us in a better position to recruit people for the mission,” said Velasquez, 61. “You can grow more intentionally without the limitations for-profit models have.”

Dar Salud, which means “give health” in Spanish, has been Velasquez’s mission for more than 20 years, starting in the late 1990s, when he did clinical research at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital’s pediatric endocrine division.

What he saw startled him as a physician trained in Venezuela. Many of the pediatric patients had adult risk factors, including cardiovascular disease, severe insulin resistance, hypertension, high prevalence of sleep disorders, asthma and obesity-induced concerns.

Velasquez pursued the issues as a member of the faculty in the College of Medicine and later the College of Nursing, where he is still an assistant professor.

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In conjunction with UT, Dr. Velasquez founded LifeDOC in 2005 with the intention of creating a facility to treat, prevent and manage diabetes, obesity and other underlying conditions. The same year, he also founded a multi-specialty family practice clinic to serve the then-rapidly-growing Hispanic community here.

The nonprofit will reflect what Velasquez and his team have learned in 15 years treating these populations.

“There are a lot of people in Memphis who believe in what we are going to do and want to be part of it,” said Pedro Velasquez Jr. “Being a nonprofit gives them an avenue to be part of it as donors, partners and volunteers.”

 The idea is to help a larger pool of Memphis patients, disconnected from medical care for a variety of reasons, get access to care, including preventive care at an early age.

For patients who are uninsured, Dar Salud will offer membership in VitaPlus, a health program with varying membership levels that include discounts on office calls and lab work. The average cost is $55 a month.

“It has helped almost 2,000 uninsured/low-income people already and is a great affordable way for us to be able to guarantee access to everything they need in the long-run,” Pedro Velasquez Jr. said in an email.

In 1993, Dr. Velasquez received a Harvard University fellowship in diabetes and endocrinology at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. Shortly after he finished, his family moved to Memphis so son Pedro could be treated at St Jude.

In his gratitude for the good things that have happened in his life in Memphis, Velasquez is bequeathing the practice to the city, hoping to improve its residents’ health through clinics that will not answer to shareholders or the financial issues for-profit medical practices have.

“We have relationships with Christ Community Centers and Church Health,” Velasquez Jr. said. “We are not going into this nonprofit model to be competition. We are trying to be part of the solution. There is a much larger demand than there is supply.”

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Because nonprofits can solicit gifts and donors, and do not have to share the profits from the sale of a practice, for instance, moving to a nonprofit status can “absolutely” be a way of leaving a legacy, says John Mills of ECHO (Empowering Church Health Outreach), the 501(c)(3) arm of the Church Health Center that offers low or no-cost consulting to faith groups wishing to start nonprofit clinics.

“A nonprofit is ideal for that,” he said.

“Finding the board members that can open the doors in the philanthropic area is crucial. Once you have found your board, then you have got to tell your story in the community about why you are looking for support. What is your mission? Why should people care?”

LifeDOC’s board members are: Omar Rodriguez, attorney; Bill Ganus, editor/publisher Edible Memphis; Jocquell Rodgers, public education advocate; Ignacio Vincentelli, senior counsel, International Paper; Antonio Olavarrieta, manager of financial systems at Pfizer; Robert Meyers, attorney; and Velasquez.

The initial work of establishing a nonprofit includes establishing a donor base, says Martin Hiller, also with ECHO.

“You want to ask, ‘Is this something you could see supporting as we get started and moving forward,’” he said. “You need answers to these questions before you move forward. You could build an incredible vehicle but have no road to ride it on.”

In Tennessee, which did not expand Medicare under the Affordable Health Care Act in 2010, more than 468,000 people were uninsured last fall. COVID-19 has exacerbated the numbers. As of Thursday, May 28, 92,000 in Shelby County alone had filed for unemployment since mid-March.

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How the nation’s health care system will respond to the growing number of uninsured “is yet to be written,” Hiller says. Public safety-net facilities, including nonprofit clinics, he says will be part of the solution.

Velasquez says the nonprofit model allows him and his team to address complicated health problems — diabetes, cardiovascular issues and obesity – in a way that will continue after he retires from daily practice.

“We want to change the paradigm in Memphis by teaching people how important it is to have health equity early so they develop healthier outcomes.”