â€œAAPI will establish free Yoga clinics in every state to serve mostly as a treatment center for back pain, migraine, breathing problems and generalized anxiety/depression,â€ Dr Aravind Pillai, newly elected chair of the board of trustees of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) said.

â€œWe would like to start it as a first step, Yoga clinics all over the US. Once this is done we hope to get AAPI members to volunteer to identify sick children and elderly in the mainstream who cannot afford medical care and nutrition and the next step will be creating a strategy to help them.

â€œOnce established the clinics will help the homeless and hungry and elderly in the country,â€ Pillai, an internist internist practicing in Sanford, Florida since 1992, said.

Pillai has been serving as AAPI board member for the last 2 years. He was elected

during the spring governing body meeting held in Washington DC.

The BOT chair is the custodian of AAPI trust funds, who will make investments and monitor growth. The chair will conduct internal auditing of financial transactions and must take initiative to raise funds for charitable foundation. He will serve for a period of one year.

â€œAs a chairperson I would like to start country-wide AAPI awareness campaign with the help of the 11 board members, regional directors and presidents of local chapters affiliated to AAPI,â€ he said.

â€œI have promised to go to New Delhi with Dr Seema Jain, president-elect of AAPI, in January 2016 and meet with the prime minister and health minister lobbying to create a position similar to that of the surgeon general in the US and establish an institution on the lines of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to implement and coordinate preventive measures in all Indian states.

â€˜India needs to modernize our health care system by accrediting hospitals and medical schools. We should promote and establish free clinics throughout the country to address preventive medicine especially in the growing areas of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes,â€™ he wrote in the AAPI Journal.

Since 1994 Dr Pillai has worked in various committees of AAPI. He is also the founder president of CAPI (Central Florida association of physicians of Indian origin.)

He was the president of the Association of Kerala medical Graduates (AKMG) and served as co-chair of the 2008 AAPI convention. He served as the chair of the Hindu Society of Central Florida Chairman from 2001 to 2005.

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AAPI will establish free Yoga clinics: BOT chair Dr. Aravind Pillai