Indians may lose a path to med school

By Mary Jane Smetanka
Star Tribune

DULUTH - American Indian doctors are rare, but Katie Cannon knew one when she was growing up on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northwestern Minnesota. She liked Dr. Ed LaDue. He was always chewing gum, and he always seemed happy. LaDue was one of two Indians to enter the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1972, when it began making special efforts to recruit Indians. Cannon, 27, who starts medical school this fall, could be one of the last to benefit from federally funded programs that encourage the search.

Funding ends Sept. 1 for the Center for American Indian and Minority Health, one of three centers in U.S. medical schools that focus on encouraging Indians to go int! o health professions. That will cut its budget by 83 percent, from $1.325 million to $225,000.At risk are programs that work with talented middle school and high school youth and college undergraduates. Those programs helped the U graduate more than 100 Indian physicians since 1990, more than all but one other American university.

Dr. Ed Haller was one of the faculty members in Duluth who started recruiting Indians into the Medical School. Now retired, he calls the federal budget cut "unconscionable." Nationwide, funding was eliminated for all centers of minority health, except those at historically black colleges.

"The people who have been here have been role models and an inspiration to students," Haller said. "I remember one student who said he had been told that he should be a truck driver. That sort of thing just brings tears to your eyes.

"University officials hope that the school can redirect enough money to restore at least half ! of the cut funds, said Medical School Dean Deborah Powell. The! school is lobbying Minnesota's congressional delegation to try to get funding restored next year.  Powell credits the program for the fact that 17 of the 200 students who start medical school on the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses this fall are Indians. Those students come from across the nation, drawn by the opportunity to work on reservations, study with Indian doctors and take classes dealing with issues such as how medicine intersects with traditional healing practices."

To provide the best health care to patients, be they Caucasian or Somali or Hmong or American Indian, one has to understand their culture and beliefs," Powell said. "We have to have students who come from those cultures."

From disbeliever to doctor

Dr. Alan Johns, a member of the Oneida tribe, was an electrical engineering major on the university's Twin Cities campus in the early 1970s when he got a call "out of the blue" from Duluth. Had he thought about applying to medical school?  "I didn't know if I really wanted to be a doctor," he said. Don't you have to be in a premed program? he asked. Don't you need better-than-perfect grades? Convinced that he should give it a shot, Johns joined LaDue, who had been working as a lab technician at White Earth, and entered medical school in 1972.Johns said he wouldn't be a doctor without the program. He splits his time between teaching at the Medical School and treating patients in Duluth. LaDue practiced medicine in Mahnomen, Minn., for 25 years before his death in January. Last week, the center's endangered summer programs were in full swing. Jacqueline Duncan, a 14-year-old from Cold Spring, Minn., is thinking about becoming a nurse.

"I was never interested in the medical field; I thought it would be too hard," she said. "But it's fun to learn about the human body.  "Upstairs, college undergraduates in the Native Americans into Medicine (NAM) program ! were learning how to measure blood pressure. Otis Bitsuie, a 21-year-old Navajo, came from the University of Utah for the summer program.  "Medicine offers lots of good opportunities, and I'm pretty sure that's what I'll pursue," he said.  It's important that Indians have contact with Indian doctors, Bitsuie said. "A lot of natives don't have the trust there [with doctors from outside their culture]," he said. "That can make a very big difference. It can ease apprehension if they see a native.

"From misery to medicine

In 2004, Katie Cannon was one of the NAM undergraduates. "It boosted my confidence -- this could be reality. I could go to medical school."  Cannon's path to medical school was not easy. As a teen, she began drinking, dropped out of school and gave birth to her daughter, Trudy, when she was 16. Eventually she graduated from high school and went to the University of Minnesota, Morris, where her father had earned his degree.

Cannon did well her first quarter in college. But it didn't last. She was alone with her baby, missing her loving extended family. After two years, in academic trouble, she left Morris and returned to White Earth. She worked in a tribal casino for a while. Next was a quality control job in a factory that dehydrated vegetables. Watching an orange blur of carrots roll by on a production line, plucking out ruined vegetables, she realized she needed to return to school.

"I thought, I need to go back and do something for myself and other people," she said. Cannon returned to Morris. Another Indian student, seeing her talent in calculus, told her she should be a doctor. Together they took the first step with a notoriously tough organic chemistry class. Her friend dropped the class (he is now pursuing a master's degree in public health). Cannon failed. Determined, she took it again and got an A. She did well in her other classes and graduated last year with majors in Native American studies and anthropology and a minor in biology.

She waited to tell family that s he was aiming at medical school. "I didn't want to disappoint them," she said. When she did, her parents were thrilled. Her father had been a good friend of LaDue. This summer, Cannon and other Indian students who enter the Medical School this fall are taking a histology (tissues) course intended to give them a taste of the rigor and time management issues that they'll encounter.  When Cannon graduates, she wants to work with Indians. "I remember what it's like to go into places and not have people talk to you," she said. "I'd like to be a role model for Native American women. I'd like to show them that things can happen in life and you still make good things happen."  She applied to only one medical school. She and Trudy, now 10, agreed that Duluth was the only place they were interested in.  "You see other people who want to do it, too," Cannon said. "You have companions in your path. You're not alone."