COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS

San Joaquin Medical Society Alliance welcomes spouses of physicians

BY JO ANN KIRBY

Being new in town can be daunting. But the San Joaquin Medical Society Alliance is here to welcome the families of physicians, residents and medical students and ease their transition into San Joaquin County life. They offer friendship and social events while also advancing projects that help enhance the health of our community through projects and scholarships.

Since 1931, when the first meeting of what was then called the Woman’s Auxiliary was held, the group strived to get to know the spouses of our physicians. It’s been called the San Joaquin Medical Society Alliance since the mid-1990s and today, the group’s members want it known that they are still here with open arms.

“You have the knowledge of all these physicians and their families in this town, we have the knowledge of the community, which we are willing to share,” San Joaquin Medical Society

President Nancy Schneider said of her efforts to shore up membership. “They might have something they can also impart to us as well.”

Membership in the Alliance has dwindled from its high of 250 to about three dozen.

Schneider said today’s busy lifestyles make it difficult for people to commit to the Alliance but she said carving out time would be well worth it. “Friendship is the biggest thing. You meet other people in the same situation. I met other physicians’ spouses when I first joined,” she said, recalling how she was introduced to the Alliance when her and her husband, Dr. Ed Schneider, came to Stockton so he could begin his career in family medicine.

Since its inception, the Alliance was a way for members to network on behalf of their physician spouses. “We were new to the area and my husband had opened a practice in the area and we wanted to get to know people and let people know what the practice offered,” said Debra Johnson, who was a member for over 20 years. “There was a tremendous need in the community for my husband’s specialty. At the time there were only two ear, nose and throat specialists in the area.”

New members have an instant repository of information should they want to know the best neighborhood to live in, a good preschool, where to shop and dine, or when youth sports signups take place.

Trisha Macko, whose husband is an orthopedist, remembers when she was younger and leaned on the wisdom of women in the Alliance when she was new to a town. She’s belonged to Alliances in three different states and found the San Joaquin Medical Society Alliance so helpful. “So, belonging to it personally for me … I met women older than I am who had been in the town for the long time and knew kind of the ins and out of Stockton,” she said. “It was very welcoming to have kind of an instant group right away.”

In addition to practical knowledge, the group has been very effective in its community health endeavors. Members raised awareness among young people to consider the medical profession with a Health Careers Day and grew a scholarship fund. They founded a program to offer babysitting courses. To this day, the Alliance aids the Child Abuse Prevention Council and other help organizations. In the past, they have advocated for vaccinations, immunizations, amblyopia testing, CPR training, hosted a nutrition puppet show, held a symposium on teen alcoholism, distributed information to educate against bullying and so much more.

Laurie Yeager has been a member of the Alliance for 31 years and was introduced to the group when she and her husband moved to Stockton so he could begin his practice. “I feel like the organization has changed somewhat through the years as more and more wives have busy careers of their own. Nevertheless, I would still encourage people to join the Alliance and create a vital community,” she said. “I enjoyed the opportunities to provide community service and education materials, to learn about the larger organization and legislative matters concerning medicine and also the fun times we had with dinners, holiday luncheons, the follies, etc. Most of all, as I mentioned, any time we can form new connections, develop meaningful friendships and make a newcomer feel less alone, it is a good thing. The Alliance members were a wealth of information about everything in Stockton.”

These days, the Alliance has a book club that and they will be hosting an upcoming luncheon with a cooking demonstration. They are collecting toiletries and socks for a local homeless shelter, peanut butter for the food bank, gathering new and gently used books for the Child Abuse Prevention Council and still funding a scholarship.

Finding new members is a challenge because with so many doctors joining big medical groups, the members have difficulty tracking down names and contact information of spouses. In today’s economy, more spouses are working full-time and juggling child-care and their children’s activities, which makes it hard to commit to meetings. Schneider says it’s a problem not just unique to the Alliance.

“I’ve tried to make contact with all the residents at St. Joe’s. The residents did like all the cookies we took them from Fizz Bakery on Doctor’s Day,” she said. “A lot of the organizations in town, it’s the same people involved.”

But the Alliance is still here as a welcome wagon of the best kind and hopes that the medical community well help spread the word to encourage membership.

Macko thinks there is still a need even though people have other things on their plate

“It was important to me to connect to other people who knew what it was like to be married to a physician. Your husband is very, very busy,” she said. Macko, whose orthopedist husband is still working in his 60s, said her husband recently put her in touch with a young patient’s mother who has three children and is married to a physician in his residency. Macko said she has reached out to the young mother and made several connections.

Schneider, who is also president of the state Alliance, said she’s appointed a taskforce to study the membership challenge. “We are getting tired. We need new, young leadership,” she said with a laugh.

In the meantime, she hopes to continue spreading the word about the Alliance and encourages potential members to learn more about joining by going online to https://www.sjcms.org/programs/sjms-alliance.aspx.