GOOD SAMARITAN MEDICAL DENTAL MINISTRY

On top of a mountain in Horn Creek, Colorado during the summer of 1978, a dream was born to. A dream that one day, healing for the land and people of a warstricken country named Vietnam, would come in a form of a medical team.

In 1999, six young adult leaders of the Vietnamese United Methodist Youth & Young Adult Fellowship made a decision to bring back their young people to their homeland to embark on a healing ministry.

In the summer of 2000, the Good Samaritan Medical Ministry made their first trip back to Vietnam. One physician and four young adult volunteers treated 1,100 people in 10 days in the Mekong Delta on a meager budget of $12,000. As word spread throughout the United States, more and more volunteers came to join the team.

In 2002, Dentistry was added, effectively becoming the Good Samaritan Medical-Dental Ministry (GSMDM). In 2003, Optometry was added along with a team of medical-surgical specialists, including Emergency Medicine, working in a close relationship with Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy.

By 2004, the ministry's growth was explosive; GSMDM made a strategic move north to province of the Cao Bang while anchoring the Emergency Medicine Training Team in Hue. The teams would start coming to Vietnam twice a year. The EM Development Team began to Hue for a week in March of every year. By 2010 a team of 60 internationally recognized EM specialists organized the largest international medical-nursing conference Vietnam had ever seen. And today it remains as the premier medical conference in the country.

After 13 years of work throughout the country of Vietnam, GSMDM made a decision to return to the province of Cao Bang with one single objective: To improve the healthcare system for the entire province. The team had decided “that it is always wonderful to come two weeks every year to help the people ourselves but what happens after we leave? “To make a long-lasting impact on the conditions of the local people, their own local physicians must be able to care for their own. in 2013, the team of primary care physicians from the US has been training local physicians and empowering them to care for their own patients. This training lasts four years. Today this amazing ministry continues trips to Vietnam and has more than 127 servants headed to help this summer. If you are a medical, dental or optometry professional or just someone who wants to help, find out more on how here: http://www.gsmdm.org/summer-missions/.

Not able to go overseas? LSSSC often partners with medical and other providers to provide services. For example, Dignity Healthy and GeriSmiles are working with LSSSC to provide dental screenings to those we serve in the San Bernardino area. To volunteer with LSSSC see: volunteers@lsssc.org.

September is Hunger Action Month. During September the American network of food banks step forward together to raise awareness about hunger. These include food banks that support pantries like Lutheran Social Services’ Project Hand in Chula Vista and smaller food pantries supplying emergency food at our Riverside, Ventura (Thousand Oaks), Orange (Fullerton), Los Angeles (Long Beach/South Bay) and San Bernardino County locations. You can join in fighting against food insecurity in your community. A great way to start is by learning how it affects our friends and neighbors in Southern California.

California produces nearly half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, yet 1 in 5 Californians — that’s about 8 million — currently struggle with food insecurity. “Food insecurity” is the occasional or constant lack of access to the food one needs for a healthy, active life.

Food insecurity has serious impacts on an individual’s well-being, which may result in poor school attendance and performance, lowered workplace productivity, and physical and mental health problems. Individuals struggling with food insecurity have to make tough decisions that no one should face. No family should have to decide between buying groceries or paying rent, no senior should have to choose between food and medicine, and no parent should have to skip a meal for their children to eat.

While many of us are familiar with food pantries designed to reach families with children, California has seen for a while now a rise in different populations in our communities experiencing hunger. With the rise of tuition, housing and more – many more college students are experiencing food insecurity too.

Concordia University in Irvine, for example, is meeting the need in unique ways. Among the many ways they fight food insecurity for students is by hosting a food pantry at their Veterans Resource Center for all military, veterans, and their dependents have 24x7 access while they are students. Further north in Ventura County, Cal Lutheran University offers a program called the Community Cupboard. This free service provides non-perishable food items, grocery store gift cards, and guest meals in their cafeteria to any current Cal Lutheran student needing additional support.

Seniors, who could traditionally find free or reduced hot meals at their local senior center, were affected a good deal by COVID 19. Food banks found that they had to increase their services to provide home delivery by 73% to this vulnerable population during the worldwide crisis. Organizations like Meals On Wheels, that already delivered, were stretched by the increase due to decreasing volunteer pools during that time.

So why is food insecurity still so high in Southern California? One reason cited by a 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation; State Health Facts database highlighted that racialized poverty was keeping residents of California who are of color hungriest.

Comprehensive measures of poverty rank California as the state with the highest poverty rate in the nation, driven by its high cost of living. The cost of living burden falls hardest on California’s Black, brown and indigenous residents who experience the state’s highest poverty rates at 19.3%, 15% and 20.3%, respectively.

SNAP (Cal Fresh) Food assistance in California is administered at the County level unlike states like Oregon who administer it at the state level. Counties with less population or more geographic area often have greatly reduced administrative capacity and different priorities that can affect enrollment rates. Those seeking access have different

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