Student Profile

Listening to Alison Shigaki you get the impression that public health is about the preservation of family and traditions, the sustainability of our environment, and the importance of community networks. Dr. Shigaki has been working as a family physician at a Seattle clinic for ten years now. She mostly treats families who have recently immigrated to the US. This experience has given her an understanding of how difficult it is to teach preventive medicine to people who come from areas of poverty worse than most Americans know. Many of her patients visit a doctor only when a doctor is badly needed. Alison's commitment to her vision made her the perfect choice for the Department of Health Services' 2007 Student of the Year Award. She is a student in the Extended MPH Degree Program.

Both Alison's grandfathers immigrated to the US and her grandmother was a principal of the Seattle Japanese Language School. Together with her parents, they've shown her that a commitment to one's passion can make a difference. Feeling the need to follow their examples, she joined the Aloha Medical Mission in 2004, and now makes annual visits to Laos.

The life expectancy of the average Laotian is just under 56, and 30% of the population lives below the poverty level. Larger villages have a "hospital," or a clinic by American standards, and some of the smaller villages have buildings with a few beds and fewer supplies. In remote areas, villages share a midwife who doesn't provide services until a woman is ready to give birth, and health care falls into the hands of the layman. The mission has pressed further and deeper into the Laotian backcountry, expanding its efforts as its relationship with the Laotian government grows.

The mission team brings in all its own supplies. Members fly into Luang Prabang, the old capital in northern Laos, and travel into the villages by truck. Many of the villagers haven't seen a doctor since Alison and her team were there the previous year. Poorly ventilated wood fires are kept burning at night in the homes at higher altitudes, and asthma is widespread. Tuberculosis and malaria are also commonplace, although treatable. Many villagers, however, are blinded by cataracts, and the mission is in need of an ophthalmologist. Much of Alison's work is simply educating the Laotians on the symptoms and causes of diseases, teaching prevention, and distributing basic items, such as vitamins and dental care products.

The mission's surgical team, comprised mainly of people from Hawaii, is equipped to perform surgeries in the Luang Prabang Provincial Hospital, but there are often cases, such as heart defects in children, that they aren't equipped to deal with. The Seattle team fundraises to help pay for the costs of transporting patients to the provincial hospital and for food while they are there. Alison discussed one particular patient who was pregnant but hadn't felt her baby move for over a month. Without money or transportation, she was stranded at home.

In addition to bringing the sick out of the villages, the Seattle team has also started a scholarship to help qualified people of Laotian, Mien, and Hmong descent in the US travel to their native countries as mission volunteers. The scholarship covers airfare and lodging, whose costs would otherwise prohibit many from participating in the mission. The team also fosters connections by working closely with health workers and public health officials in the villages, and with physicians who work out of Luang Prabang Provincial Hospital.