At Saturday's Wellness on Wheels outreach clinic, one face in the crowd was learning just as much as she was helping. Nicole Kim, a Master of Public Health intern with Todu Guam Foundation was busy interacting with patients who showed up to the outreach clinic telling Guam News Network the experience gives her a firsthand look at health disparities on Guam.
A student from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) with ties to Guam, Kim said her understanding of the health of the community was limited prior to starting her internship.
"I didn't know a ton. My mom actually grew up on Guam, so a lot of my knowledge was based on her personal experience. ... I was connected with Todu Guam is through one of my professors who's from Saipan and works in the Marianas. So, um, I sort of knew more generally about the Mariana region and sort of the health disparities that impact our region," she said.
Kim has been on Guam for two months; she is interning with Todu Guam Foundation as part of her journey to be a Public Health Practitioner.
"I don't provide specific care services. Like, I won't be taking your vitals or giving immunizations or anything like that. But what I really do is focused on ensuring population health. So, how do we improve services for people at a population level, at a community level? And how do we best tailor those services to the community that we're serving," Kim explained.
This is her first year in the internship program, noting the experience with Todu Guam Foundation has "really informed ... my future work as well as how I complete my more focused studies for my second year of the program."
One major take away Kim shared from her two months working with the Guam community through the clinics wasn't clinical at all.
"There's a bunch of patients waiting and they kind of know each other or they're from the same village, and they're able to chat, and support each other, like, through this health journey. And I think that's something that is really valuable that I wasn't really expecting to be such a big takeaway from my internship here and something that I think Todu Guam and programs like this can really leverage in getting people to be more educated about their health as well as getting us into these services," Kim said.
Her background mainly in Oncology, Kim described the Primary Care exposure through Todu Guam mobile outreach, valuable.
She stressed that kind of personal interaction reveals things that data can't.
"So, for example, is it education or is it just being able to get those services? Because if the gap on paper is like people are underdiagnosed for diabetes, for example, we don't know where that gap really comes from. And being able to interface with people, really see what's going on in the clinic level is something that helps inform those solutions," Kim said.
She believes that one "major" gap in Guam's healthcare is "simply educating people about what is needed for their health."
Kim will be completing her internship with Todu Guam Foundation in September.