Siamit Rounds

Jordan Lewis, Unangax from the Native Village of Naknek, Alaska, is professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Minnesota. His pioneering work in the fields of aging and rural community health spans family caregiving, Alzheimer’s disease, and cultural generativity among American Indian and Alaska Native Elders. In this episode, we discuss successful aging, cultural resurgence, and caring for Elders through his community-based research in Alaska.

Corina Kramer is Social Medicine Faculty at Siamit, Associate Director of the Keats Fellowship, and Qargi Facilitator at Maniilaq Social Medicine. Her mentorship, leadership, and all-around brilliance shaped Siamit from the beginning. In this episode, we talk about social medicine in Native America and the Qargi model Corina developed for connecting culture, care, and community.

Matt Tobey is Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Rural Medicine Programs, Director of the MGH Fellowship Program in Rural Health Leadership, and Rural Medicine Faculty at Siamit. He practices internal medicine with the Indian Health Service and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in Rosebud, South Dakota, where he’s pioneered an innovative clinical partnership model grounded in an ethics of tribal leadership and community care. In this episode, we talk about the Rosebud partnership model and the broader role of academic medicine in community health.

Donna May Kimmaliardjuk is the first Inuk cardiac surgeon, Clinical Fellow at the Cleveland Clinic, and Siamit Faculty. In addition to her skill as a surgeon, Dr. Kimmaliardjuk has a knack for explaining social theory in a language familiar to health workers, with precision, care, and fearlessness. In this episode, we talk about coloniality and Indigenous resurgence through a doctor’s sort of analogy: parasitism and the immune response.

Ashley Weisman has a well-earned perspective on emergency medicine and community health in rural and remote Alaska. A former Siamit Fellow and MGH Wilderness Medicine Fellow, Ash now serves as Siamit Faculty and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine. In this episode, we talk about the meaning of wilderness medicine, the role of academic-rural health partnerships, and the importance of remaining a lifelong learner as a physician, teacher, and community member.

Katie Martin, member of the Cherokee Nation, is a physician-educator at Oregon Health Sciences University and the Northwest Native American Center of Excellence. She’s a primary care provider with the Klamath tribes in Southern Oregon, and one of the most thoughtful physicians you could every hope to meet. In this episode, we talk about medical education and tribal health through a social medicine lens.

Teressa Unaliin Baldwin, from the Native Village of Kotzebue, is Itinerant Therapist at Maniilaq Association. A graduate of the Columbia School of Social Work, Teressa was one of the first Siamit Fellows in 2018—and has since returned to Northwest Alaska to practice as a clinical social worker. In this episode, Teressa describes the draw to mental health, decolonizing social work, and the path to where she is today.

Note: Since recording this episode, Teressa has joined the Harvard-Siamit team as a social medicine counselor and research fellow.

David Jones is A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He’s a historian of epidemics in Indian Country, among other things, and a real smart guy. In this episode, we talk about what can be learned from past epidemics—and what a social medicine response to Covid-19 might look like.