Advocacy Champions

MMA recognizes Advocacy Champions every month.

Learn about our current champion, as well as our past champions, listed to the right.

June 2025 Advocacy Champion

Shari L. Bornstein, MD, MPH

Internal Medicine Physician
Mayo Clinic

1.    Why is being an advocate important to you?
As a general internist who has pursued public health interests alongside practicing medicine, I have had a personal goal of bringing the fields of public health and medicine closer together.  I believe that our best chance at improving the health of our communities and population health is by increasing collaboration between the two fields, which have often practiced in separate silos. 

2.    What health care related issues have you advocated for over the past year?
I have served on my local board of health in both Illinois and Minnesota for over 25 years. In that capacity,  I have tried to provide the perspective of the practicing internist, with a public health view to the issues impacting local public health.  We are facing so many public health challenges right now, and we need to ensure that our physician voices are part of policy conversations.

During my tenure as Chair of the MMA Public Health Committee, we worked on the very important issue of the increasing suicide rates in our country and in Minnesota.  One of our most important accomplishments was providing information to our physician colleagues across the state about resources they could use to address mental health and suicide with their patients and communities during  Suicide Prevention Awareness month. We also wrote the first ever policy for MMA addressing suicide prevention and advocated for the MMA to write letters to medical specialty societies, medical schools and residency programs encouraging inclusion of suicide prevention in their educational programs.

3.    What advice would you offer to others who are interested in advocacy?
Some of the most rewarding experiences I have had have been voluntary and working with colleagues on issues that are important to me and our communities.  Our practice demands can seem so overwhelming at times, but I have found that thinking about health issues outside of our daily routine and the individual patient in front of us, can be both  rewarding and motivating.