Chicago Community Health Pioneer Dies at 62

A pioneering force in community medicine in the greater Chicago area for nearly 40 years, Dr. Padmanabhan “Dan” Mukundan was a founder and Chief Medical Officer of Access Community Health Network (ACCESS) as well as the Chairman and founder of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago.

“Dr. Dan,” as he was known to patients and colleagues alike, started his career in Chicago with two medical practices supporting residents of the city’s largest public housing buildings, the Robert Taylor Homes, in the 1970s.  His experiences in these practices helped shape his lifelong commitment to caring for the medically underserved, a passion that he carried into his work at ACCESS and Mount Sinai.

Dr. Mukundan’s strategic vision helped build ACCESS into the nation’s largest network of federally qualified community health centers, turning his belief that every patient has the right to a physician of their own into a reality for the organization’s 215,000 patients served in ACCESS locations across the greater Chicago area.  As the nation’s attention has turned to health reform and the need for rapid expansion of health care to medically underserved patients, Dr. Mukundan was instrumental in ACCESS’ expansion from its original six health center locations in the mid-1980s to its current 50 locations, which has drawn attention from across the country.

“Dr. Mukundan believed that patients should have the right to choose their own physician and that the relationship between a doctor and patient should be a mutual selection.  He talked often about approaching patients with humility and opening up to patients with a truly caring attitude,” recalls Donna Thompson, CEO of ACCESS. 

At ACCESS, Dr. Mukundan recruited and developed a large and highly diverse physician group, bringing together close to 300 physicians and nurse practitioners speaking 34 different languages.  Dr. Mukundan was a champion for teaching and research within community health centers, developing and studying approaches to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities, such as systems to promote screening and early detection to prevent disease.  He established the Mount Sinai Family Medicine Residency Program within one of the ACCESS health centers in the late 1990s, the first of its kind in the area to localize family medicine teaching in a community health setting.

Dr. Mukundan was a Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics and American Board of Family Practice.  Active in the medical community, he held an appointment as an assistant professor, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science/Chicago Medical School, and was a member of the Chicago Medical Society, Illinois State Medical Society, American Academy of Pediatrics, Illinois Academy of Family Physicians, and Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.

He is survived by his wife Viji; son, Srini; daughter, Lakshmi; sister Anuradha Madavan; brother Renganathan; mother P. Sulochana; and mother-in-law K. Rajalakshmi. Funeral services will be held on Saturday, February 7 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Oakridge Cemetery and Chapel, 4301 Roosevelt Road, Hillside, IL 60162. Phone number for Oakridge is 708-344-5600. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, memorial gifts be made to Access Community Health Network, c/o Lauren Holhut, Department of Institutional Advancement, 1501 South California Avenue, NR6-105, Chicago, Il 60608. For more information regarding a memorial gift, please contact Lauren Holhut at 773-257-6425 or via email at hollau@accesscommunityhealth.net.