20
doc • Winter 2014
Kentucky
Profile in Compassion
Finding a Way to Serve
By John A. Patterson
MD, MSPH, FAAFP
Even as a child, Tom Young
knew he wanted to be a physician serving children. He
clearly recalls his inspiration
for becoming a pediatrician. Through reading the Weekly Reader in elementary school
in the 1950s, he became aware of Albert
Schweitzer’s life of service as a medical missionary in Africa. He decided he wanted to
be an Albert Schweitzer. He says ‘Wherever
you go in the world, mothers and fathers
everywhere feel love and compassion for
their children and want them to be healthy
and successful in life.’ He wanted to find a
way to help give disadvantaged children an
equal chance.
After a general pediatrics residency, he completed a fellowship focusing on community
and school health. He subsequently secured
grant funding for Lexington’s first school
health clinic at Harrison Elementary. This
site was selected because of its high number of homeless children from the nearby
Salvation Army. This was the first large
federal grant to establish a school health
clinic in the United States. He believed that
success in the classroom depended on the
quality of physical and mental health of the
child, not simply the quality of their teachers. There are now seven school-based clinics in Lexington, all staffed and administered
by HealthFirst Bluegrass.
Inspired by Schweitzer’s foreign medical
missionary example, Tom Young began
working 20 years ago in Ecuador with two
main objectives- improving the individual
and community health of an impoverished
shantytown on the outskirts of Santo
Domingo and providing service learning
opportunities for UK medical students, residents and physicians. He began with a team
of 5 pediatric residents in 2002. Teams now
number 50-60 and the program is run by
UK Shoulder to Shoulder Global. After local
focus groups and fundraising, a full-time
clinic has been in operation for 7 years in a
former clinic building that had been abandoned for years. The clinic now includes
adult and pediatric services with a full time
local physician, dentist and nurse as well as
a pharmacy and support staff that provide
home visitation services.
Health professional students and practitioners are involved in three trips annually as
part of this international service learning
experience. UK colleges represented include
medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy,
health sciences and public health. Some
undergraduates from UK, Centre and
Transylvania have also joined the team. All
participants take a required 3 hour course
covering cultural competency issues and
interdisciplinary healthcare teamwork.
In addition to their emphasis on providing
local Ecuadoran health care and service
learning for Kentucky learners, they have
begun to provide training for local providers. In cooperation with the Ecuadoran
Ministry of Health, they have initiated the
Helping Babies Breathe program, created
by the American Academy of Pediatrics and
the World Health Organization, to train
local birth attendants to properly resuscitate
infants at birth. Based partly on the success
of the Ecuadoran project, Young and others in UK pediatrics have begun a project
in India for children with special needs and
developmental problems.
Sam Matheny, former chair of UK’s
Department of Family and Community
Medicine, has worked in Ecuador with
Young for years and says ‘Quite simply,
Tom has a heart of gold.’ He is passing on
the inspirational legacy that has driven him
since childhood. Many students, residents
and physicians who have participated in
these service learning projects have had lifechanging experiences, feeling reconnected to
their reasons for going into medicine. One
student gave Tom a framed quotation by his
original inspiration, Albert Schweitzer“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but
one thing I do know: the only ones among
you who will be really happy are those who
have sought and found how to serve.”
About the Author
Dr Patterson is past president of the Kentucky
Academy of Family Physicians and is board
certified in family medicine and integrative
holistic medicine. He is on the family practice
faculty at the University of Kentucky College
of Medicine and the University of Louisville
School of Medicine. He operates the Mind Body
Studio in Lexington, specializing in stressrelated chronic disease and burnout prevention
for helping professionals. He can be reached
through his website at www.mindbodystudio.
org
Tom Young