{"id":1060,"date":"2009-10-23T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.onegoodcookie.com\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2013-04-26T21:46:50","modified_gmt":"2013-04-27T01:46:50","slug":"anthony-fleg-md-medical-reformer-and-community-activist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insidesurgery.com\/2009\/10\/anthony-fleg-md-medical-reformer-and-community-activist\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Fleg, MD, MPH – Medical Reformer and Community Activist (Part 1 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Fleg, MD, MPH is a family practice resident and medical activist at the University of New Mexico<\/a>. We recently had a chance to meet with Dr. Fleg to talk with him about his vision for healthcare.<\/p>\n

\"Anthony<\/a><\/p>\n

Where are you from<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

I was born in Richmond, Virginia to a mom who was a 3rd year medical student. We moved shortly thereafter to the Baltimore area, where I grew up and proudly call home.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Where did you go to college\/grad school\/medical school and what was (were) your academic majors?<\/p>\n

I attended Haverford College and U. Maryland Baltimore County, earning a B.A. from the former in “Public Health Studies” which involved a thesis from my work in the St. Elizabeth’s neighborhood of north Philadelphia, looking at how health was affected by the housing, crime, educational, and employment difficulties of the community.<\/p>\n

After two years of teaching elementary school in Baltimore, I attended U. North Carolina Chapel Hill for medical school and public health.<\/p>\n

Why did you decide to go into family practice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the days of thinking about a career in medicine, my vision has always been to help bring high quality care to medically underserved communities, and in these settings family medicine will allow me to do a little of everything, to be of most use to the communities I am serving.<\/p>\n

What was the impetus for the founding of the Native Health Initiative? What is your role in the organization today?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Native Health Initiative grew out of a collective decision by community members and health professions students that the lack of attention given to American Indian communities’ health was neither acceptable nor inevitable.<\/p>\n

Our goal was to begin working on health projects identified by the Tribes, using health professions students and community members as volunteers to carry out the work.<\/p>\n

Your funding for the 2008-9 year was quite modest. Do you have any plans or desire to seek more funding and what do you need to do be more successful at fundraising?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

NHI has a different model of funding – whereas many organizations define their credibility by how much monetary funding they are able to acquire, NHI measures how much we can do without monetary funding, using an ethic we call “loving service” in which all volunteers – from clinicians to tribal leaders – are giving from their heart, putting their unique talents and energies into making NHI work.<\/p>\n

As an example, we would see our funding for our 2009 Summer Health Justice Internships, with 10 student interns serving in North Carolina and New Mexico, as plentiful.<\/p>\n

Yes, we only had $1500 to spend, but we were able to generate 6,000 hours of loving service over the summer!<\/p>\n

I think these days particularly show that relying solely on monetary funding is not a great idea for the non-profit, change-the-world efforts.<\/p>\n

However, when you focus more on how to equally distribute power, how to ensure that the process of doing the work is empowering to all, and is done from the heart, you find a “funding source” that does not dry up!<\/p>\n

How is your organization different from other Native American Organizations?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In no way taking away from the other great work being done, NHI is a unique model for addressing health inequities.<\/p>\n

A few things immediately come to mind in terms of how we are different – Returning to Indigenous values that place one’s sincerity and integrity as paramount to titles, degrees, funding.<\/p>\n

NHI is working not only to amplify this ethic in our Native communities, but also to bring this wisdom to the University settings to help them improve their work with underserved populations.<\/p>\n

NHI sees itself as a global health project.<\/p>\n

We have taken the existing model of global health, where wealthy folks from wealthy countries go to volunteer in the “developing world” and have advocated for a more honest version of global health, one that includes the U.S. and its underserved populations.<\/p>\n

Thus, we are the only U.S. based program bringing students from abroad to work in settings of health need in this country.<\/p>\n

And we can say proudly that our work is being noticed – the Global Health Education Consortium (GHEC) recently awarded NHI as its 2009 Global Health Project of the Year!<\/p>\n

How you can effectively impact the healthcare of the Native American tribes you work with when none of your volunteers are licensed, independent medical practitioners? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Our work on health issues has a much different focus than the medical and clinical ways we think of health.<\/p>\n

This comes from a very simple foundation of NHI – community leaders identify the health needs, and the issues that have been identified have centered around youth empowerment, for example curbing the high rates of high school dropout, preservation of culture, and health education.<\/p>\n

For our volunteers, many of whom are medical and pre-medical students, this is a very eye-opening experience, reminding us that communities see “health needs” in a very different way.<\/p>\n

But you cannot argue that the vast majority of inequities in health have little to do with health care, but everything to do with the social determinants of health, the elements far upstream from health care that create unhealthy or healthy individuals and communities.<\/p>\n

Can you explain\/describe your stated goal of eliminating the use of commercial tobacco and supplanting it with the use of traditional tobacco as a spiritual\/healing substance?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tobacco is a name given to a wide variety of medicinal, ceremonial, and sacred plants in American Indian cultures. Ranging from lavender to “sweet grass”, tobacco is present in almost all Indigenous societies, with one important common theme – it was never a substance of abuse.<\/p>\n

When we walk into the local convenience store and see tobacco companies selling “toxic tobacco” with myriad images of Indian chiefs and symbols on their products, we should all be infuriated.<\/p>\n

NHI’s Keep Tobacco Sacred campaign is about re-teaching and re-claiming the true intention of tobacco.<\/p>\n

In our American Indian communities, we are teaching the traditional and ceremonial uses of tobacco as a way to decolonize the notion that many of them have of tobacco – that I should smoke because that cigarette package has a picture of my ancestor on it. As we say to youth – breathe tradition, not addiction!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthony Fleg, MD, MPH is a family practice resident and medical activist at the University of New Mexico. We recently had a chance to meet with Dr. Fleg to talk with him about his vision for healthcare. Where are you from? 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