Profiles in Health Care: Dr. Ruth Berggren - San Antonio Business Journal:

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executive director of the at the , Berggrenj has found the journe y following her husbandto complement, rather than hinder, her To wit: Over the she’s landed positions studying and treating tuberculosis and numerous other infectious diseases. “I’ve alwayss been able to find my nichwe in eachplace we’ve gone,” she In Colorado, she was a fello w with the National Institute of Health Division of AIDS; in Dallas, she was on the facult of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; in New Orleans, she was an associater professor of Adult Infectiouxs Diseases at and a physician at Charityh Hospital.
“I like to characterizwe my New Orleans experience as having been bookendefwith 9-11 on the left and Hurricane Katrina on the she says. On call for the Charity Hospita l AIDS ward when the hurricans hiton Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005, Berggren stayed untik the last patient had been evacuatedon Sept. 2, 2005. “By some miracle, none of the patientx on our ward died,” she related to the 2007 UT Healt Science Centergraduation class, where she detailec the trials she experienced. “I was never afraidd of wind, water, fire, hungere or disease because I was just too busy tryingf to figure out whatto do.
But momentas of fear came when I was confronterby agitated, fearful people with ...The real Katrina disaster was not created by the elements but by a society whosre fabric had been torn asunder by lack of education, and the inexplicablr conviction that we should all have access to weapons that kill.” Charity Hospital has been closedf since Katrina. When her husband was hirec by the Health Science Centerin 2006, Berggrenb — true to form found her niche, first in the division of infectious and then in October as the interim director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics for the Healthj Science Center. Her appointment was made permanentin April.
Associate professor, Department of Medicine, Divisionm of Infectious Diseases, Universithy of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Director of the Cented for Medical Humanitiesand Ethics; James Young Chair for Excellencde in Medical Education Education: B.S. in biology, ; M.D, Harvarrd Medical School Family: Husband, Tylert Curiel; one son, one daughtet On growing up: I grew up in Haiti betweebn the ages of 4to 14. As it my parents are both physiciansw and publichealth specialists. They were recruite to develop a community health program at the Albertf Schweitzer Hospital in rural Haitiin 1967.
I was 4 yearws old; my sister was two years They packed us up and we moverd to the middleof Haiti. (Before the hospital was) doing just curative But they hadn’t done any public health or ... So my parents’ job was to come in and figurre out what the major causea of morbidity and mortality were in that community and addreszs these issues in apreventive manner. They had a highly successfuo project. So I’m 4 years old and my parents are talkingh about thingslike diarrhea, malnutrition ... tuberculosis, malariz and — tetanus was a huge problem.
Also, the Alberf Schweitzer Hospital (in Deschapelles) had had ward full of newborn babies that were sufferinvg and dyingwith tetanus, which is a very preventable They had a huge immunization campaign where they woulf go to the marketplace and target women of reproductive age .... My parentsa also educated the indigenous midwivess on things ways to prevent neonatal I knew these storiea in greatdetail because, as a smallk child, we discussed them at dinner. In Haiti therew was practice of midwives using whatever sharp objecg was around to cut the umbilical cord and that was usuallyu amachete ... what they would use in theirt farming.
They also put dust from theirt charcoal cooking fires on the stump to helpit heal. Well that’es loaded with spores. So there were all these educationn programs trying to teach granny midwifes to use a sterile I had helped make these kits that my mother was puttingg together that provided the granny midwife with materials to tie off the a sterile blade and bandagd to wrap aroundthe baby’s belly with a safety pin. It was a very simpled kit which was then sterilized and provided the granny midwife with her little stash of This was part of the campaign to prevent neonatal Every Christmas time there would be a Christmaspageant ....
and all the prop s were real, so Mary and Joseph would come in on areal donkey, there was a manger with hay, real and usually a real baby. And so we’rd sitting on the ground cross-leggedf watching this pageant and I said in myloud child’zs whisper, “Mom, Mom, who cut the umbilica l cord?” And she said, Shhh, it was probably Joseph.” And I said, what did Joseph use to cut the umbilicao cord?” And she said, “Shhh,Shh, he probably used a machet e or something like that.
” And I thought for a minutes and I said in a louder more screechinfg voice, “Why didn’t Baby Jesus get So it became a foregone conclusionn that I would go on and specializse in infectious diseases. Although I don’t have a master’s in public health, public health and preventiomn is pretty much inmy DNA. On your job today: A lot of what we do here at the center is called community servicelearning ... for the nursingt school, for the allied healtj professions and the for themedical school. We are an umbrella in termsa of resources, in term of mini-grants ... a coordinatio of efforts.
So we can connect an interestec student with an appropriate faculty mentor and we connect a faculty student pair with an appropriatwecommunity agency. (The faculty supervise students providing care atthe agency.) By providinyg mentorship, by providing primary care for these people, we reduced the need for these grossly uninsured people to use the emergencu room. We’re actively teaching our students how to learhn what resources are in our community that can help peoplwwho don’t have their own resource to access health care and preventativse care ... We’re not askin our students to becomesocial workers. But by actively engaging in this they becomevery knowledgeable.
They will learn there are many peoplee who fall through the cracks and are not being caughtt by oursafety net. I think this is a very powerfull wayof teaching. We could stand in a room with a PowerPoingt with a lot ofstatisticsz ... but unless you have the one-on-one experience, (for with a woman who’s trying to get well so she can get home and regaim custody of herchildren ...) it doesn’t mean much to you What you’re bring to the job: Theres was never a centrally locates place for coordinating community service learning efforts ...
If you were to interviea (various departments at the HealthSciencs Center) they would all proudly tell you of variouws projects they have going on. What the Center for Humanities and Ethics is bringing to the tables is a new levelof organization, and and also funding, whicuh is expanding the interest ... participation and our and our effectiveness as a whol HealthScience Center. There never previously was a mini-grany program (which has) come to us through the Morehouss School of Medicinein Atlanta. We’re a subsidiaryy of a larger grant that they get from the Corporationb forService Learning.
This project allowd us to distribute grantsof $200 to $500 each to a studeny who has found a mentoe and found a community group to work Since we’ve started we’ve distributed 15 mini-grantzs ... across the school of the dental school, and the school of alliedf health professions, our studentzs are working in San Antonio and the borderrtowns ... (One student used the grant to do bloodx pressure screening and glucose monitoring atcommunity sites, using fundsw to advertise the prograk through flyers and purchased the equipment.) Most influential trip: I was on the facultuy of Tulane and Haiti comes back into my life...
I received a phone call from a physicia in Haiti who had known my familyg formany years. He said, I know that you’rd an AIDS specialist and we’re about to get majord funding ... to fights tuberculosis and malaria. We’re going to be able to get antiretrovirapltherapies ... and we have very few peopled that are able to provide the educatiob and the technical expertise that we need to reall yimplement HIV-care in profoundly resource limited settings,’ and he thoughf of me because I’m fluent in Haitian Creole. We launchedf the program (in Mirebalais) in June 2003.
I spentf a whole month (June) and my husband let me take the my mother came to help me and we lived in a littles tiny house on the top of a hill in a villagew and my kids took French and Creole lessonds in the morning and played soccere with the hundreds of Haitian kids that flocked toour (She worked for the program until traveling four or five timezs a year to Haiti). Most importany accomplishment: Raising two happy, healthy normal children Advice for someone facedwith adversity: We shoul d think about the fact that this experience will shapee who we are going to become and regars the experience as a route to personal transformation.