When Marcus Pina dawns his white coat and stethoscope for the first time and officially joins the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine on July 24, he’ll be doing so with a clear goal in mind: becoming a trusted physician, especially to those who face difficult barriers to accessing health care.
That goal has been a cornerstone for Pina’s education and interest in medicine, which started when he was young. His own family’s experience with health care showed the 2025 University of Florida graduate how important it can be for a doctor to be an advocate for their patient.
Marcus Pina joins the CU Anschutz School of Medicine's Class of 2030 with eyes on a career as a physician. Photos courtesy of Marcus Pina.
Pina watched his parents, who divorced when he was young, experience two different worlds, especially related to health. His mom’s family — white, college-educated, and mostly healthy — didn’t face the same challenges as his dad’s family.
“My dad's side of the family is African American, most of them with high school degrees. My dad and all his brothers went to the military straight after high school, instead of going to college, so they haven’t been as financially stable, and they've had a lot of chronic health conditions,” Pina says.
When Pina was just a year old, his dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer and continues to face various health challenges since.
“That was an early perspective about how different people have different access to medical care, medical treatment, and how things like socioeconomic status can affect health outcomes,” Pina says. “That experience definitely pushed me toward wanting a career where I can help try to change that and make a difference for people.”
Finding passion in the shadows
Throughout middle school and high school, Pina kept gravitating toward health and science. He recalls shadowing a doctor and thinking, “This is it.”
“I was in the emergency room with a trauma doctor and got to see a few different cases where people showed up in the worst possible condition you could be in,” Pina says. “How these doctors, nurses, and caretakers were able to jump in, save a life, and make a difference solidified it for me.”
As a biology major at the University of Florida, Pina kept reaching out to physicians to learn more about their specialties, even searching through the hospital directory to find doctors who might let him shadow and learn more.
Pina was also volunteering at two nearby hospitals during college, sometimes checking in on patients who had just underwent a transplant surgery. Other times he was helping restock medical supplies or grabbing snacks and filling water bottles for nurses zipping from one patient to another.
“They have such a high workload. If you can take off the little things, it makes everyone's job a little bit easier,” he says.
Marcus Pina first found interest in medicine as a middle school student, he says. In high school and college, he followed that interest and earned a degree in biology from the University of Florida.
‘I want to advocate for people’
When Pina was a teenager, his grandmother became ill. Doctors thought removing her pancreas might help, but her condition worsened.
“It got to the point where she was just in so much pain and suffering that she didn't want to keep going, she didn’t want to live anymore. Her doctor was the one that really stepped up and advocated for her,” says Pina, who remembers his family pushing for more treatment options because they weren’t ready to say goodbye yet.
“It was her primary care provider that said let's focus on making the last few days or months as comfortable as they can be. Watching how that doctor stood up and really advocated for my grandmother was powerful,” he says.
That experience has stuck with Pina and served as both a north star and a foundation for the next chapter he’s about to step into and beyond.
“I want to do medicine because I want to advocate for people. I want to help support them and push for the type of treatment that they want, that's going to be the best for them,” he says. “I want to help people who aren't getting the support from the medical community, whether it be because of their race, their religion, their status, or their ZIP code.”
For the past two years, Pina has been working in an ophthalmology clinic. Once a month, the ophthalmologist provides care to a small town of about 1,000 people, many of which don’t have the resources to see an eye specialist.
“It means a lot to them to have this,” Pina says. “So, I could potentially also see myself working in a rural community and providing care there.”
A new chapter at CU Anschutz
Starting medical school in Colorado offers new challenges and a change of scenery, says Pina who’s lived in south Florida since the age of 3. He’s ready to swap muggy hot days for snow-capped Rocky Mountains.
At the CU Anschutz School of Medicine where he will be part of the Class of 2030, Pina says he’s eager to meet fellow students and learn alongside people who share his same passions.
“When go to like a school with 50,000-to-60,000 people, everyone is doing something different. It can be a bit overwhelming but moving into a class of just over 180 people who all have the same interest, same passion, and same drive is going to be great. I’m excited to meet faculty members and take it all in.”
