Aida Giachello is not OK with it. In fact, you could say that the inequity in the U.S. health care system makes her sick. Latinos are the largest ethnic group in America without health insurance. They are twice as likely as their non-Latino counterparts to have diabetes. Puerto Ricans suffer disproportionately from the general population from asthma and infant mortality. Many Latino families suffer from living in neighborhoods near toxic waste or with polluted air, and subsequently have lower life expectancies.

Dr. Aida Luz Maisonet Giachello has been fighting racial and gender disparities in the U.S. health care system for nearly three decades. As a medical sociologist and executive director of the Midwest Latino Health Research, Training and Policy Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, her cage-rattling has helped to heal some of the worst wounds in the medical field.

Named this year as one of Time magazine's 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America, Giachello has traveled a long road from her days at a furniture store in Santurce, Puerto Rico to the venerable halls of the University of Illinois.