Bio
Dr. Esquivel is a board-certified, fellowship-trained bariatric and minimally invasive surgeon. She is a clinical assistant professor of surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also the director of community engagement and outreach for the Stanford Department of Surgery.
Specialties of Dr. Esquivel include foregut surgery and bariatric surgery. She performs robotic surgery as well as therapeutic surgical endoscopy.
She is actively building the Bariatric Endoscopy Program of Stanford Health Care. Her goal is to offer procedures such as endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty and endoscopic suturing of the gastric pouch and outlet after gastric bypass for patients experiencing weight regain.
Dr. Esquivel has a great interest in helping everyone access the care they need. She values work that minimizes disparities and promotes health equity. As the director of community engagement and outreach for the Stanford Department of Surgery, she is committed to working directly with community organizations to ensure long-term changes are sustained. Dr. Esquivel’s role also allows her to form long-term partnerships and collaborate to implement and oversee programs for underserved populations.
Research interests of Dr. Esquivel range from the global, like minimum rates of surgery to support desirable outcomes, to the more specific, such as weight loss before bariatric surgery. She has studied access to surgical care in California, as well as access to care in Zambia, Guatemala, and other countries.
Dr. Esquivel has made numerous presentations on surgical care access, among other topics, at conferences including the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress, Academic Surgical Congress, and the UK’s Royal Society of Medicine. In addition, she has written more than two dozen articles on topics such as surgical outcomes, weight loss before bariatric surgery, and global access to surgical services. Her work has appeared in JAMA, the World Journal of Surgery, Journal of Surgical Research, Journal of Surgical Education, Lancet, and elsewhere.
Among her many honors, Dr. Esquivel has won the prestigious Samuel L. Kountz Humanitarian Award, awarded to a Stanford resident distinguished by professionalism, compassion, and respect for the dignity of others—attributes shared by the late Dr. Kountz, a trailblazing surgeon and the first African American surgical resident at Stanford. Dr. Esquivel also won the Resident Research Award of the Year in Stanford General Surgery and the Post-Doctoral Fellowship Award from Stanford’s Hispanic Center for Excellence.
In addition to serving as the director of community engagement and outreach, Dr. Esquivel directs the “Service Through Surgery: Surgeons with an Impact” course in the Stanford University School of Medicine and is the co-chair of the Stanford Department of Surgery Diversity Cabinet.
