Juanita Lozano-Pineda, DDS, retires, leaving a legacy of access and mentorship
After 30 years, the founder of the LEAD program passes the school's outreach mission to Dr. Christine Meiners
Juanita Lozano-Pineda, DDS, MPH, grew up in Brownsville, Texas, in a migrant farmworker family that traveled as far as Florida for seasonal work. Her husband, Oscar Pineda, told colleagues at her retirement gathering that this childhood taught her how one person can make a difference, and became the root of her commitment to public health and underserved communities.
After more than 30 years at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UT San Antonio) School of Dentistry, Lozano-Pineda has retired from her role as associate dean for external affairs and director of the school's Hispanic Center of Excellence. She leaves behind the Learning Enhancement for Achievement in Dentistry (LEAD) program, a pipeline she built to recruit students from underserved South Texas communities into dentistry and send them back to serve those same communities. Christine Meiners, DDS, FICD, now succeeds her as associate dean for community engagement.
The path she built for others
Lozano-Pineda earned a bachelor's degree in biology from St. Mary's University in 1983 and graduated from UT Health San Antonio School of Dentistry in 1987. She later completed a master's in public health in epidemiology and community health from UTHealth Houston in 2010.
Her own path into dentistry was not easy. A dentist she shadowed as a young woman once discouraged her from applying to dental school.
"I felt that as a first-generation college attendee, what you need is someone to support your dream rather than trying to stop you," Lozano-Pineda has said.
She began teaching dental students as an adjunct faculty member in 1990, supervising clinical rotations at CentroMed, a federally qualified community health center in San Antonio. She joined the faculty full time in 2002 and became associate dean for external affairs in 2017. In 2020, she received the UT System Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award.
"What I enjoy most about teaching dental students is the ability to engage and educate students to develop skills that will allow them to be compassionate oral healthcare providers for the communities they will serve," she said at the time. "I am passionate about bringing out the best in each student, and seeing them receive important clinical training while they also help address the oral health needs of our community."
Building the pipeline
That philosophy became LEAD, a multi-year program that follows students from their undergraduate years through dental school. Alongside the Building Our Leaders in Dentistry (BOLD) workshops, which reach high school and college students in San Antonio, Brownsville, Harlingen, Mercedes and Laredo, LEAD introduces students to dentistry early and stays with them through graduation.
"We recruit them, we mentor them, we guide them so they're successful applicants," Lozano-Pineda has said. "Once they're in dental school we want to be able to provide the resources that they need to be successful and to graduate."
Between 2014 and 2024, 61% of LEAD participants applied to dental school, 64% of those were accepted, and 61% of those accepted chose UT San Antonio School of Dentistry, according to the school's most recent published figures. Roughly 40% of practicing dentists in South Texas are graduates of the school.
"The LEAD program exists to create a workforce that is needed," Lozano-Pineda has said.
Outreach in the community
Since 1985, the school has sent students on clinical rotations to community health centers across South Texas, including San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo, and more recently Luling and Seguin. Dental students now see more than 36,000 patients annually through these rotations, providing roughly $5 million in uncompensated care each year.
Much of that outreach runs through the school's mobile dental clinic, supported by partnerships with the Valley Baptist Legacy Foundation, Methodist Healthcare Ministries and, for more than 20 years, the Sisters of Mercy in Laredo.
At Lozano-Pineda's retirement gathering, Sister Rosemary of the Sisters of Mercy recalled decades of visits into the colonias and barrios of the Rio Grande Valley, where dental students treated patients who had never seen a dentist. The Sisters of Mercy dental clinic has since closed, but members returned for the occasion and presented Lozano-Pineda with a Sisters of Mercy cross, a symbol that carries no figure because everyone who serves must put themselves on it.
"We send the students on rotations so they can understand the communities we serve, but they may see themselves choosing to practice there because that community really needs a dentist," Lozano-Pineda has said. "If they are from the community, they definitely understand the tremendous need."
Passing on the mission
At the retirement gathering, Scott Stafford, DDS, associate dean for corporate and alumni affairs, spoke of the years Lozano-Pineda put into shaping the students she brought into LEAD, and of the trail she and Elaine Neenan, DDS, blazed for Meiners to now follow.
Meiners, a 2010 graduate of the school who spent 11 years as a community dentist before returning to lead the outreach programs, has credited Lozano-Pineda and Vidal Balderas, DDS, MPH, as mentors who shaped her own career.
"The many opportunities to serve the vulnerable populations of South Texas outside of the dental school, and the amazing mentors it connected me with, made my dental school experience one that I truly appreciated and reinforced my passion for public health and service to the community," Meiners wrote in a 2025 Salute magazine essay. "When the opportunity arose to work alongside my mentors to support and oversee the very programs that had such an impact on me, I didn't hesitate to return."
"When they return to practice in South Texas, they already understand the community's needs and the power of service," Meiners has said of the students who come through the program.
At the gathering, colleagues and former students spoke about how much Lozano-Pineda's mentorship had shaped them. Her oldest son, Daniel Pineda, PhD, now an associate professor at UT San Antonio, said he speaks to his own students about his mother as one of his professional heroes, and that her example continues to shape how he mentors students today.
Dean Kenneth Hargreaves, DDS, PhD, presented Lozano-Pineda with a glass plaque in recognition of her career.
"I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Juanita Lozano-Pineda. Following many years of dedicated service, she has been an outstanding advocate for the School of Dentistry and has made lasting contributions to our community programs that have set Dr. Meiners and the school up for success in the coming years," said Hargreaves.
In her remarks during the retirement event, Lozano-Pineda thanked the mentors and colleagues who shaped her own path into academia, the outreach staff who kept the mobile van and LEAD programs running, and the community partners across South Texas, including Methodist Healthcare Ministries and the Sisters of Mercy. She said the students, especially those from South Texas and Laredo whose own journeys mirrored hers, brought her the most joy over her career.
She closed by telling Meiners she is only a phone call away.
The School of Dentistry is grateful to Lozano-Pineda for her many years developing students to provide compassionate care in their communities, and for building outreach programs that will carry her work forward.