Dr. Raúl E. de Velasco, one of Florida’s leading nephrologists and a longtime contributor to the Miller School of Medicine, its Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, and Baptist Health South Florida, died in Coral Gables on December 15, 2024. He was 83.
Born in Havana, he received his medical degree in 1967 from the University of Miami School of Medicine. He then joined the Indian Health Service where he was medical officer in the Zuni and Navajo reservations for two years. Returning to Miami, he completed his internal medicine residency and nephrology fellowship at the Jackson Memorial/Veterans Administrations programs with the University of Miami. He was board certified in internal medicine and nephrology. He was a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He was a board member of the Greater Miami Chapter of the ACLU.
Dr. de Velasco practiced nephrology with distinction in the Miami area for more than 40 years, serving on numerous medical staff committees in local hospitals. He was Chief of Staff for American Hospital, president of the Florida Society of Nephrology, and Medical Director of Kendall Dialysis Center. He established a comprehensive ethics service for Baptist Health of South Florida and chaired the Baptist Health System Bioethics Committee and the Ethics Committee at Baptist Hospital. The system initially comprised three hospitals; that ethics structure has been expanded to all 11 current Baptist hospitals. Before retirement, he was an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the Miller School.
He contributed to the UHealth Ethics Service since its inception, leading “Ethics for Lunch” education sessions and serving on its Ethics Committee. He contributed to the Miller School of Medicine’s ethics curriculum for medical students and regularly participated in curricular and extra-curricular initiatives to humanize the formation of future physicians. His clinical ethics expertise included end-of-life care and organ transplantation.
A student of philosophy, he was especially interested in empathy as grounding medical ethics and morality. He was active in UM’s Department of Philosophy.
Dr. de Velasco lecturing about empathy at the Miller School of Medicine in 2013.
“Raúl was the embodiment of the humanist physician, and countless medical students are better for it,” said Kenneth Goodman, PhD, Director of the Miller School’s Institute for Bioethics. “Few community physicians have contributed as much as he to the mission of our medical school.”
Dr. de Velasco was keenly interested in Cuba’s democracy movement and advocated for more person-to-person medical and philosophical exchanges. He was founding member and president of the Cuban Committee for Democracy. His father, Dr. Raúl V. de Velasco Guzmán, had been president of the pre-revolutionary Cuban Medical Association.
He guided the creation of a resource intended to document the history of philosophy in Cuba – Plataforma de Filosofía, Ética y Bioética en Cuba – and mentored the scholar Antonio Correa Iglesias in its development.
He is survived by his wife, Ana Maria Pozo, seven children and nine grandchildren. A daughter, Joanna de Velasco, is Executive Director of UM's Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations.
Dr. de Velasco's family suggests donations be made to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in his memory.
