For decades now there have been active efforts to recruit more American Indians to be medical doctors. Reporter Melissa Townsend has this report about why Native doctors are so important and how well current recruitment efforts are succeeding.
Transcript
For decades now there have been active efforts to recruit more American Indians to be medical doctors.
Reporter Melissa Townsend has this report about why Native doctors are so important and how well current recruitment efforts are succeeding.
Health disparities for American Indians in Minnesota are some of the most stark in the country.
Part of the solution to improving health in Native communities is connecting more Native people with good health care.
But that can be a problem because of the history of genocide and ongoing oppression in our country.
OWEN: There’s a huge wall of distrust that we have to get past to get people to continue to come to the door and get taken care of. (:06)
Dr. Mary Owen is from the Tlinket Nation, originally from Alaska.
She’s been a family doctor for over 15 years.
She is also the Director of the Center for American Indian and Minority Health at the University of Minnesota based in Duluth.
OWEN: We know there's not always been a good history of things that are done for Native people by our government. We have lots of stories about people having either had someone injured in our health system or someone even die in their health system. (:12)
Dr. Owen says the key to improving healthcare for Native people is to have more Native doctors who understand the importance of history and culture.
The University of Minnesota - where Dr. Owen is based - graduates the second highest number of Native medical students in the country.
University of Oklahoma graduates the most.
But nationally the numbers of Native students entering medical school and graduating medical school are decreasing.
OWEN:Across the country, we only graduate 30 to 40 Native physicians out of 19,000 physicians each year. (:06)
At Indian health Services clinics, there is a 47% vacancy rate for doctors in the region that includes Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
The need for more Native doctors has prompted a national campaign called We Are Healers.
The website features videos of Native medical providers telling their stories.
One video features Dr. David Baines.
CUT OF BAINES FROM VIDEO (:43 - 1:52): [music in] I had no concept growing up on the reservation of growing up and going to college. Nobody expected anything of us so we didn’t expect anything of us either. (:17)
He got a job at the tribal saw mill, but a few months in, terrible accident crushes his legs.
They eventually did surgery and I went down to Arizona to stay with my mom because I needed someone to take care of me. She was going part time to the community college. So went into the career office and took one of those tests that asks you if you’d rather play basketball or read a book. And the first one was truck driver. And then 7 of the 9 were all in the medicine. [music out] (:29)
Dr. Baines was an early mentor to Minnesota’s own Arne Vainio.
Dr. Vainio is a family physician at the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior tribal clinic.
VAINIO: I’m first generation college and my cousins, when I first started out, um, even before I was in medical school, they said, why don't you get a real job? And those kinds of things, they hurt a little bit, you know, because it's hard, you know, when you're trying to get into medical school or in medical school and people think you're just skating by when you're really just, it's sink or swim all the time. (:23)
Dr. Vainio says being with his mentor was a huge motivator.
VAINIO: To be able to go and spend time with David Banes in Idaho, and see somebody who's Native American, honors this tradition. We would mule pack way up into the mountains and he was bow hunting elk all the time. And I was sitting on a rock by a stream studying hematology. But to see a Native physician like that, totally competent, he just totally rocks. And to see that it changes everything. (:26)
Dr. Vainio says Dr. Baines taught him that there is a community of Native doctors who are holding on to their traditions even while they immerse themselves in Western medicine.
Dr. Owen from the Center of American Indian and Minority Health says there’s much work to be done to recruit more Native doctors, but she says one of the keys is culture.
OWEN: I think appealing to our culture and letting people know you can maintain it, … that can be part of who you are. You don't have to lose it just because you're going through the medical system. And I think you've become a better doctor in the end. (:11)
For Minnesota Native News, I’m Melissa Townsend.