NeighborHealth Appoints Dr. Pablo Buitron de la Vega as Vice President and Associate Chief Medical Officer
Physician leader brings expertise in primary care, prevention, and innovative models for social care to NeighborHealth’s clinical leadership team
BOSTON, MA (August 14, 2026) – NeighborHealth today announced the appointment of Pablo Buitron de la Vega, MD, MSc, as Vice President and Associate Chief Medical Officer of the state’s largest community health center. A preventive medicine physician leader, Dr. Buitron de la Vega will help advance NeighborHealth’s clinical quality, population health and health equity goals across the communities it serves.
Dr. Buitron de la Vega joins NeighborHealth from Boston Medical Center (BMC), where he served as an internal medicine primary care physician and built programs that made screening and referral for social needs, such as food, housing and transportation, a routine part of clinical care. He is known for designing practical workflows and technology that allow care teams to scale solutions across busy clinical settings.
“Dr. Buitron de la Vega brings tremendous clinical expertise and a deep understanding of the factors that shape the health of our patients and communities,” said Julio Mazul, MD, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at NeighborHealth. “We know that what happens outside of the exam room can be just as important as what happens inside. Pablo’s leadership will strengthen our ability to reduce barriers to care, improve outcomes and deliver high-quality, culturally responsive care to every patient.”
In his new role, Dr. Buitron de la Vega will work alongside Dr. Mazul and NeighborHealth’s leadership team to advance clinical quality and innovative care models that address persistent health disparities. His appointment builds on NeighborHealth’s longstanding commitment to challenging the systemic barriers that have disproportionately affected low-income, immigrant and historically marginalized communities.
“NeighborHealth’s mission deeply resonates with why I became a physician and why I have devoted my career to addressing social drivers of health,” said Dr. Buitron de la Vega, who grew up in Quito, Ecuador, trained there as a physician and now lives in Roxbury. “Improving health means understanding the full context of our patients’ lives — and then doing the harder work of designing systems that respond to those needs with dignity and respect. Much of my career has been spent finding practical ways to innovate in real-world community settings. I am excited to join NeighborHealth and help translate our commitment to health equity into better outcomes for the communities we serve.”
Dr. Buitron de la Vega’s appointment further strengthens the clinical leadership team led by Dr. Mazul, who was named Chief Medical Officer in 2025 after nearly two decades at NeighborHealth. Dr. Mazul has led efforts to advance patient safety and clinical quality while expanding culturally responsive care for NeighborHealth’s diverse patient population.
Dr. Buitron de la Vega earned his medical degree from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and completed his internal medicine residency at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. He later completed training in preventive medicine and earned a Master of Science from Boston University School of Public Health. At BMC, he served as a primary care physician and as Program Director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program, where he founded a fellowship track in immigrant and refugee health. He also led BMC’s THRIVE program, which he helped grow from a single-department initiative into an institution-wide, Joint Commission–recognized model that reaches more than 100,000 patients annually.
Alongside his role at NeighborHealth, he holds a faculty appointment as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and advises BMC’s THRIVE program.
Información Acerca de NeighborHealth
NeighborHealth, formerly East Boston Neighborhood Health Center, is one of the nation’s largest Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and the largest community-based primary care health system in Massachusetts, serving over 120,000 people and recognized by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) as a National Quality Leader. For more than 55 years, NeighborHealth has offered access to comprehensive primary care, specialty care and emergency care for patients in the Commonwealth. In a first-of-its-kind merger in 2020, East Boston Neighborhood Health Center joined forces with the South End Community Health Center and expanded services to patients who live and work in Boston’s South End and Roxbury neighborhoods. NeighborHealth champions innovative care models to actively bridge health equity gaps in our low-income and immigrant communities with services unique from other healthcare providers in our state. For more information, visit www.neighborhealth.com.
