SLO pediatrician Rene Bravo named Citizen of the Year: ‘A man of the utmost integrity’
A longtime San Luis Obispo pediatrician and public health advocate was named the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce’s Citizen of the Year for 2020 and 2021.
Dr. René Bravo, a SLO pediatrician, was honored at the Chamber’s 116th annual dinner on Saturday in front of nearly 500 attendees — the first time the event was held in more than two years.
Bravo was described in a news release as “a community leader who has devoted countless hours toward improving the overall health, safety, and well-being of our community.”
“I could honestly think of a lot of people that were deserving the last few years who did a lot of stuff, and so I was surprised,” Bravo told The Tribune on Monday. “Shocked is probably the best word.”
Bravo has been the owner of Bravo Pediatrics for the past 22 years, devoting “countless hours outside of the workplace” to positively affect lives, the release noted.
“He has been a champion for local access to accurate COVID-19 vaccine information for children and has spearheaded an educational campaign across the county to ensure all families have equal access to quality information and data,” the SLO Chamber said in a news release.
Bravo also volunteered with numerous organizations and served on boards. Those include First Five of SLO County, the Foundation for SLO Public Libraries, the Women’s Shelter of SLO County, and the American Cancer Society, among others.
His friend, Lynn Cooper, said: “Anytime you are fortunate enough to work alongside him, he puts his whole heart into it and knows how to get answers and solve problems.”
The Rev. Doug Pittman called Bravo “a man of the utmost integrity.”
“He cares about other people,” Pittman said. “His decisions are never about himself…he makes decisions considering those around him.”
Putting health and safety at forefront
Bravo said he became an advocate for the COVID-19 vaccine because of its vital role in preventing hospitalizations and deaths.
He saw the death of a friend due to COVID and his daughter-in-law’s mother, bringing the virus “very close to home.”
“I realized that this was not a time that we needed to mince our words, but if we did not get the message out clearly and specifically that people needed to take it seriously, and to make themselves available of the modalities that would prevent it, that more lives would be lost,” Bravo said. “And in the last couple of years, I made it a very strong personal effort to make sure that that I advocated for the only real solid tool we have to prevent disease — and that’s vaccination.”
Bravo said his vaccine advocacy role is something he’s most proud of in the past two years.
“I think advocating for people to choose vaccines as a way of prevention, to ask questions, to not feel guilted in any way if they if they were hesitant, but to continue to ask, I think that was my most important thing,” Bravo said. “I saw a lot of really amazing, good things happen the last couple of years. People we’re just going above and beyond to keep other people safe. I thought that was really heartwarming.”
Bravo added: “It’s my personal belief is that if you give people the right information and the ability to make a good decision, most people will come to the correct decision.”
Bravo applauded the efforts of doctors, nurses, medics, teachers, public health officials, firefighters and police who “put themselves on the line during a pandemic,” saying they are “just as deserving” of the award as he is.
“I want to throw out my kudos to those teachers who went back to teach without even being vaccinated,” Bravo said. “That was incredibly heartwarming. So there’s a lot of people in my clients that are very, very deserving of this.”
A life in pediatrics
Bravo grew up in a blue-collar family in Bell, California.
“My father was a welder and a factory worker, and my mother supported him and stayed home and was a secretary,” he said. “We felt that if we were given much then that we had an obligation to give back in return to those in the community. I really believe strongly in that ethos. That’s something that’s in the fiber of my core.”
After attending medical school at UC San Francisco and doing a residency in general pediatrics at Stanford University, Bravo has practiced pediatric medicine locally for more than 35 years.
“When I first went to medical school, I had the impression that I really didn’t like children very much,” Bravo said. “They were loud and messy and they soiled their pants.”
But he had a child of his own in his third year of med school and got to know pediatricians.
Bravo raised his five sons in SLO County after moving to the Central Coast in 1986, where he has practiced since.
“I realized I loved being around kids, and children are the future,” Bravo said. “They are worth investing in beyond anything, and you get to know people over decades as you help them raise their children and their families. To me, that has been the most rewarding thing that I could have possibly chosen to do.”
As for any thoughts of retiring, Bravo said contracting COVID himself made him realize he likes staying busy.
“If that was retirement, I’m never going to retire,” Bravo said.
Coming together as a community
Saturday’s Chamber event was a return to a sense of normalcy and seeing everyone’s “smiling faces again,” Bravo said.
He said that his hopes for SLO County’s future is to work toward empathy, community and unity.
“One thing the pandemic has taught us is that we’re all human,” Bravo said. “And we’re all fallible, and we all can make mistakes, especially when we’re scared. I thought that the pandemic brought out a lot of fear and division, and sometimes just from very unreasonable responses.”
Bravo said the pandemic also showed that people could come together “to get through a disease process that no one had seen before in the history of man.”
“A lot of good things came out of that — a lot of good science, a lot of good technology, a lot of vaccine technology, medications, therapeutics.”
Bravo added: “I would like to see us coming out of the pandemic (to) develop a sense of engagement with each other, being able to talk to each other, be less judgmental with each other, and not be so quick to judge or to label each other.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2022 at 4:02 PM.
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