The timing couldn’t have been more serendipitous for Milan Shah, MD.
After training in New York and in California, Dr. Shah found himself on the move again in mid-2025, this time landing in San Antonio. The urologist soon received an email from the Texas Medical Association with information on Leadership College, a program exclusively for physicians in their first eight years of practice.
That window was closing for Dr. Shah – so he jumped in. He immediately found common ground with his classmates.
“We want to do more than just a clinic,” he told Texas Medicine Today. “Helping patients, that’s what the ultimate goal is, but there’s a field that’s beyond the [direct] taking care of patients that is of similar importance.”
Because Dr. Shah didn’t have the benefit of a Texas medical school chapter introducing him to TMA, he says Leadership College was a “painless” way to get to know the association, showing him the engine of organized medicine and how other physicians in the state make a difference for their patients.
With that roadmap, he hit the ground running, stepping into a TV partnership already established between his employer, University Health, and KENS 5, San Antonio’s CBS affiliate. The issue was of utmost importance to him: prostate health.
The American Urological Association reports about 63% of U.S. counties lack a urologist, a shortage growing more urgent as the specialty workforce ages.
Because of that and other factors, Dr. Shah knows it’s common for urological and prostate health concerns to go unaddressed.
He was proud to promote prostate cancer screening on Great Day San Antonio, but a bigger triumph came when he used his fluent Spanish to record a brief segment on Despierta San Antonio, a Univision program.
Dr. Shah says around 10 patients paid his clinic a visit in the weeks after the Great Day San Antonio appearance. In the two weeks after his Despierta spot? Twenty.
“It just speaks to how much that patient population is receptive to that, and eager to be met with their own language and in their own space,” he said.
Dr. Shah plans to continue his media appearances, but first, he’ll finish his master’s degree in business administration. When he does, he wants to pursue the opportunities set up in his Leadership College education.
“TMA has done a really great job bringing physicians together,” he said. “It’s one of the best in the country. I’ve trained in the big places, and TMA does a great job.”
For more information on the Leadership College including the application and selection process, visit its webpage.