UB Medicine Spring 2019

GLOBAL HEALTH SPOTLIGHT

Brendan Raleigh, MD ’14, left, treating patients in Fontaine, Haiti, assisted by Peterson Audate, a medical student in Port-au-Prince and a translator.

Observing, right, is Michael Campbell, Class of 2021.

NOT IMMUNE TO DISPARITIES

BY MARK SOMMER

GLOBAL HEALTH SCHOLARS TRACK OPENS EYES AND DOORS

Global health programs in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences opened doors that Brendan Raleigh, MD ’14, eagerly walked through, both as a student and a resident. In his fourth year of medical school, he completed a one-month rotation in Impfondo, Republic of Congo. As a resident, he trained in the Department of Family Medicine’s Global Health Scholars Track, which refines residents’ core primary care skills and enhances their cultural competency in meeting the needs of underserved populations, internationally and locally.

In his first year of residency as a global health scholar, Raleigh practiced in Chiapas, Mexico. He was in Moyobamba, Peru, his second year and in Davao, Philippines, his third year. All these experiences proved eye-opening, Raleigh says, especially in regard to glaring disparities in health care.

In the Philippines, he worked in an underfunded hospital, where he helped patients with hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes. In contrast, wealthier people in the country had access to first-rate private hospitals and clinics. This was also the case when he worked in the emergency room of a small tertiary hospital. “We did a lot of suturing of people who rode small motorcycles and came in with cuts and fractures,” Raleigh says. “The ambulance they arrived in lacked basic life-support systems. It was a big van, so more like a bus ride than an ambulance. Care was fee-for-service and because the patients had to pay for

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the lidocaine and the suture, we tried not to use too much.”

Raleigh’s one-month rotation in the Republic of Congo was in Impfondo, a remote area where malaria and fevers were endemic. When he arrived, the hospital was down to one physician. “People came from hundreds of miles away to get care—even from other countries. The saddest thing is that because people are so malnourished, they have little reserve to make it through infections or other things that people in the United States normally recover from.”

The United States is not immune to disparities in health care, Raleigh notes, even if they’re not as severe as in the countries overseas where he has worked. It’s a big reason why he chose to practice family medicine at Jericho Road Community Health Center on Buffalo’s West Side (see related article on page 18). Jericho Road serves a large immigrant population as well as local residents, regardless of their ability to pay. Most are low-income. “We aim to raise the level of care for the most desperate and vulnerable people in our society,” explains Raleigh, who serves as medical director of Vive, a branch of Jericho Road that assists asylum seekers.

In August 2017, Raleigh returned to the Republic of Congo, where he practiced in one of Jericho Road’s overseas clinics, located in Goma. In December 2018, he teamed up with the Jacobs School’s student-run Global Health Interest Group to work with mobile clinics in Fontaine, Haiti.