Terrific interview.

Between this and James Appel in Tchad, it appears as though Adventist Health International knows how to pick 'em.

Thanks, Paul and Alita, for a great interview. I can see a new genre developing of young Western Adventists--Nathan Blake, Paul Howe, James Appel etc--who are subverting the expectations of climbing corporate and financial ladders. Instead, with their Loma Linda MDs and their Yale and Washington and Lee law degrees tucked away in their pockets out of sight they're modeling service, and passion for causes bigger than the almighty dollar. More power to them.

Thanks for the inspiring interview. Well done, Paul, and God bless.

It is wonderful when people serve those in need and contribute to improve the lot of others. I did my internship at Washington Adventist Hospital and during my residency worked nights at the small hospital in Hyattsville directed by Dr. Carl Houmann. I was ready to go to the Adventist hospital in Addis Ababa, then to the Adventist Hospital in Karachi, and to the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, but every time, after having volunteered, the Health Dept. of the GC decided that they needed a clinician more than a pathologist, something I can perfectly understand.

I am no longer an Adventist, although I consider myself a spiritual person. Even so I found many opportunities to be o service to my fellow humans. I developing laboratory accreditation criteria for Brazil an set up the first laboratory accreditation program there, which this year commemorated its tenth year, at which time the Brazilian Clinical Pathology Society honored by with the generous title of "The Father of Laboratory Accreditation in Brazil".

I have also been very active in Rotary, a great humanitarian organization that contributed enormously towards the reduction of polio in the world, to mention just a few projects.

Because I had a very negative and shocking experience with a sudden termination of my contract as Chief of Pathology at Hinsdale Hospital, I reevaluated my relationship with God and concluded, rather late, that He is the God of all humanity, thus much larger than the Adventist organization and its peculiar interpretation of the Bible.

In my present spiritual Weltanschaung I can reconcile much better with my conscience and intellect the knowledge of science, history and other fields than through the narrow angle eyepieces of the SDA doctrine and organization. I have never regretted this evolution in my position, but I would not try to foist it upon anyone else. Everyone needs to find his own point of equilibrium in personal spirituality.

Erlo Roth, MD

Fascinating interview! I am proud to know and love both Alita Byrd and Paul Howe. I too am interested to see what my generation will do with their positions of leadership while serving the worldwide church. As young people like Paul rise to prominence, I have high hopes for the directions we might go.

Thanks for the fine interview.

Long ago I was a student missionary in Gimbie (1969, teaching in Dongoro. Ethiopia has been in my heart ever since.

Thanks to my experience in Gimbie and, in part, the mentorship of Gladys Martin, a very special long-time missionary to Ethiopia, I chose a career in public health/community health education.

The needs faced in Gimbie are difficult, I observed, but the challenges of "development" and the need "wholeness" seem to be uniformly problems, worldwide. Here on the Oregon Coast issues of alcoholism, methamphetamine, tobacco, poverty, mental health, obtain.
The needs are just different than in Gimbie, Debra Tabor, or Addis.

It pleases me to read about how the Gimbie team is still working hard to fulfill the healing and peace-making mission of Seventh-day Adventists and friends.

As a comment above noted, we need thousands of young Seventh-day Adventists who "who are subverting the expectations of climbing corporate and financial ladders" to go out into the world to help facilitate peace and healing in the world.

Jim

James R. Becraft, M.P.H.
Community Health Educator
Tillamook, Oregon

What is AHI's relationship with the Health Dept staff of the GC and their Health department counterparts in each of the division where AHI functions. Is there a line of direct, formal communication between them? Or, do they work independently of each other?

Also, is there not an overall accrediting agency at the GC that serves all our mission hospitals so we may have an idea where each facility stands in overall management/administrative effectiveness and quality of care?

Hope someone can answer these questions.

Thanks for sharing from your heart your first two months at Gimbie Hospital. I too am a graduate from CUC and went straight into mission service and found similar satisfaction. Now retired from denominational employment but the new president of Adventist Frontier Missions my interest is once again directed to missions and I am happy to say that we are in the process of working with Dr. Dick Hart and Adventist Health International to develop a joint project in West Africa. Only time will tell the results.
Again, thanks for sharing the inspiriation of what a Christian education will do to help make a difference in the world.
Dale J. Bidwell, President
Adventist Frontier Missions

The overwhelming debt accrued by most professional graduates would prevent them from doing missionary work. By the time those obligations are finished, there are likely to be children with educational needs unavailable in remote mission districts.

I applaud what he is doing. Wouldn't it be a wonderful gesture if the very highly paid CEOs of SDA hospitals here in the U.S. could help to subsidize such missionary hospital endeavors? Their salaries are often higher than their secular counterparts and surely, they could afford to donate some for those who doing such sacrificial work of the same caliber.

Appreciated in knowing that our mission goes on to help those in need. You have a real focus in life and know what God wants you to do. So may of us are still searching for our own missions. God Bless you and your staff as you serve Him. You will see the Glory of the Lord every day! In His Service, Stargazer

Notwithstanding corporate expectations, as if climbing the church organizational ladder of a multilayered bureacracy such as ours matters not, do we apply a more or less stringent criteria in selecting a chief mission administrator in a developing country compared to the requirements for a CEO of a medium-size healthcare system or chain of small facilities in Los Angeles, London or Sydney?

While a profusion of praise is in order and welcome, hope we don't go overboard by not also offering some constructive observations for the sake of a reality check. About this 25-year old, straight-from-law-school CEO of a 71-bed mission outpost hospital plus several outlaying small clinics, won't a fresh M.Div, MPH, or MBA graduate do just as well in comparison? There's a downside and upside to being fresh and green, as some of you already know. We've been there and done that, too, right?

A US-based Filipino Adventist dentist first introduced me to Aunie and Marc Scalzi, and their two young children, when they arrived in the Philippines as AFM missionaries in 1987.

http://www.afmonline.org/about/timeline/1987.php

Since they had planned to establish temporary residence, for the next 6 years, in the same general area where I was already actively involved in volunteer community development work among mountain tribal minorities (near and around the Banawe Rice Terraces) with a Protestant missionary couple from Oregon, it was a blessing for me to be able to visit from time to time and serve alongside this first-time AFM missionaries in a supportive volunteer role as well.

Like anything else, medical knowledge today has become global. It's no longer possible to keep healthcare professsionals from acquiring the exact same scientific information that those who live thousands of miles away in the most developed countries possess. Needless to say, this common intellectual and social environment raises similar expectations. Professional colleagues ask the same question: what the standard ought to be and how best may healthcare be delivered no matter where one lives. This leads to my point in the form of the question I asked in the beginning regarding accreditation of Adventist mission healthcare facilities, no matter who owns them and what agencies/organizations have assumed the responsibility to administer the same. In my book, the same criteria should apply, so that what's understood to be Level I for one country, for example, ought to be the same Level I in another. A clearer picture of the different levels each institution have achieved may well serve as a helpful guide for young CEO's, where to start and what direction they are expected to take the institution they've been put in charge. Presently, at what Level is Gimbie Adventist Hospital?

I've been searching my memory of a chance meeting and brief conversation with a CUC student who seemed to fill the exact same description of the subject of this interview. This was in 2004, when my wife and I were visiting from LA, to witness our son's graduation. A family friend who worked in the GC had invited us for an informal reception in their home following the morning Commencement service at the school where, I believe, Paul and I met. My other recollection of the event was the joy of meeting veteran medical missionary, Dr. Wadi Farag. Accounting for even the modest growth in the secular healthcare sector of developing countries, Dr Farag's own assessment of the state of Adventist healthcare delivery in the Middel East and Africa should give pause to those who might still remember when Adventists seemed to enjoy a reputation of being at the forefront of development and medical progress there.

http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ms/news/Foundation_Report_Ethiopia.doc

The above link was posted by a British physician (medical student?) regarding her elective service spent in Gimbie. It's an honest and accurate description of what life is like in remote mission outposts. If anything, the duties of a CEO in a perennially resource-starved church institution like Gimbie is more daunting than anywhere else. Though as usual there's a bite in her remarks, let me second Elaine's recommendation for CEO's of our large, modern medical centers to partner with those we send out to the unknown.

I'm not a business or administrator type, and my professional training is far from having made me an expert on the subject. But I'd served in similar situations. Why we seem to have sanctified the tradition of building Adventist schools and hospitals in the most isolated jungle known to humans has been a question in my mind. Those who are not of our religious community don't labor under such inhibition.

http://www.yemagemedicalcenter.com/

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1529569059/bctid339013683

Healing my African countrymen
Immigrant builds hospital

I would like to thank Spectrum Magazine for offering to interview me. I accepted the interview in the hope that the people of Gimbie would benefit thereby. Their needs are truly desperate and I constantly search for ways to alleviate their pain. Christ’s ministry combined physical and spiritual healing. It is my purpose to follow this model.

Globalization has facilitated mass communication and information. Sadly, our senses are numb to the tragedies we see in the media. Somehow we think that the parable of the Good Samaritan and warnings of Matthew 25: 31-41 only apply to people in our subdivisions. In this age of global citizenship, I believe “neighbor” should apply to all those within our ability to help. According to 1 John 3:17 we lack God’s love if we pass by those in need. Sometimes I fear we trade our eternal destiny for the temporary convenience of giving our neighbors the blind eye.

In much of the world, there is a direct relationship between a person’s income and the quality of health care they receive. If Ethiopians had the same per capita income as Americans, Gimbie Adventist Hospital would look more like Loma Linda and I would never have gotten this job. Improvement often requires outside help. The viability of Gimbie Adventist Hospital and the quality of care it provides is dependant on you. Don’t let Gimbie down.

I note in passing that I am proud to count Dr. Farag as a dear friend and mentor. His grandson was my college roommate and Mr. Coo’s son Victor was one my close college friends.

Interestingly, SDA hospitals that truly operate in the deepest jungles usually thrive due to the lack of competition and the fact that donors are galvanized by such sexy projects. Finances at GAH had tightened as it struggles to provide accessible health care while its competitors require cash upfront.

I would like to encourage each reader to shake off the dangerous and soporific self centeredness that pervades the US and Europe. The world needs us to live like Christians.

There was an Adventist Swiss cardiologist/internist, Dr C. Peter Jaggi, and his wife Verona, I met in Blantyre, Malawi back in 1999. A CT-Scan donated by his colleagues in Zwitzerland was so equipped that it was possible to send images electronically, which Dr Jaggi often did, to radiologists in Zurich for final reading. I've since wondered when technology will advance far enough so that clear photo images of tissue slides can also be transmitted by similar means.

Joselito, I wonder, too, why electronic transmission of pathological slides cannot be sent just as radiological ones. This would be a tremendous boost, as there are now radiologists anywhere in the world who can diagnose for small town physicians who do not have access to the latest technology and specialists. Surely there must be such availability currently. Anyone?

Paul, thanks for including me in this impressive report. This will be a terrific learning experience for you and Alita. I understand your comment about Ethiopian food. The Blue Nile just opened in Harrisonburg and is one of my favorites.

If you decide to try your hand at the Foreign Service, this will be great training.

I'm co-chairing a committee to study the medical malpractice problem in VA and recommend reform, especially, disclosure of medical error and early dispute resolution processes. Wish you were here to consult!

I'm also teaching again this fall - start in less than two weeks!

All the best
Larry Hoover