New Mexico residents have some of the lowest health statistics in the nation, but Arthur Kaufman has lofty goals for change.
On Sept. 9, Kaufman, the vice chancellor of UNM’s Center for Community Health, will be presenting his radical ideas for health reform at TEDxABQ, a convention at which speakers from a variety of backgrounds will present their ideas.
The medical world first piqued his interest when he read about a doctor working on the front lines of World War II.
“I said ‘I have to be a surgeon working in China’ — I mean, this guy was fascinating,” Kaufman said. “It was just interesting how he connected his work, surgery, with social change.”
Kaufman then attended the University of Chicago, completed medical school at the City University of New York in Brooklyn, and worked for the Indian Health Service before starting the current community health program at UNM.
He said the colleagues who helped him initiate the program were not run-of-the-mill doctors and nurses.
“We all had these alternative experiences,” Kaufman said, “whether it was in the military or Indian health, migrant health, international health … all of us saw the world in a different way, and we saw medicine as part of a big social movement.”
To better understand community health care problems, members of the program traveled to rural communities in New Mexico to speak with residents. Contrary to their expectations, Kaufman said the communities accused UNM of only coming when a grant was awarded, being disconnected from the people’s needs and imposing its own systems on the communities.
“They said, ‘You don’t come for our priorities, you come with yours; you never ask for our wisdom, our leadership’” he said.
“‘You’re known as the University of Albuquerque, not the University of New Mexico.’”
Kaufman said many communities have praised NMSU’s agricultural extension program, where an agent is located in every township, so he decided to use that idea and apply it to health.
“We’ve started to put extension agents in different parts of the state, and that’s one of our premiere programs,” he said. “Now, in real time, we are always hearing what the issues and needs are, and we’re training communities to tap into all of our resources with someone who’s in their hometown.”
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Tim Nisly, curator for TEDxABQ, was involved in the review and selection of Kaufman’s work, and he said that he couldn’t understate the program’s importance.
“He’s got a really cool vision for changing the health care system, and he’s doing it,” Nisly said. “It’s not just an idea,”
Kaufman said the main purpose of the program is to focus on health in a broader sense, not just malady and disease. This entails fewer preventable hospitalizations, better immunization rates, more accessible primary care, improving graduation rates and the economy.
“When you look at the real causes of ill health, it’s not a lack of doctors and nurses in hospitals, it’s all the social determinants — food, jobs, education, housing, etcetera.” Kaufman said.
