On April 22 our Healers toured the Group Health Rainier Medical Center.  Our guide, Dr. Michael Madwed, has been a family medicine faculty physician and adolescent medicine advocate for almost 30 years.  Our Healers were so excited for this experience that they stayed two hours after school in order to attend.  

We learned some key points from touring the clinic:

• The practice of medicine takes a team approach.  It's important to have a clinic design that allows the front desk, nurses, medical assistants, and physicians to communicate and work together.
  
• Many of our students have served as interpreters for their family during medical visits.  We discussed that for reasons such as privacy and accuracy it is important to have medical interpreters available.
• A family doctor sees many different types of patients!  We saw spaces for physical exams, procedures, and a triage area for very sick patients that may need to go to the hospital.  Patients at this clinic can also have Xrays and lab tests.

We thank Dr. Madwed for sharing his time and knowledge!  Exploring our community and learning from the advocates and elders around us is a key part of developing a vision for what role we can play as future leaders.  

In Peace and Health,
Dr. Malik

With all the flowers in bloom, it seems unfair not to give credit where it's due - to all our wonderful bee friends!

Our 4/8 session emphasized the importance of "Bee-ing Curious" about the world around us! Bees are magnificent creatures, and we attempted to tackle the 2000-yr old conundrum of why bees create hexagonal cells in their hives.

We learned about bee anatomy and their importance in pollinating our crops. We know that without bees, our cherished food and flowers would not be available to us.


Collaboration and teaching each other is key for bee and human survival, and our Healer Challenge activity involved building "hives" with strips of paper. The requirements were to 

1. build uniform hexagonal cells
2. attach the cells to one another
3. same colors could not touch each other

Our last meeting for the month took place on March 25.  Our special guest speaker, Sarah Hassaine, is a management consultant and certified in nutrition and personal training.  She got the conversation started with our Healers about healthful eating and exercise.  Key points from their conversation:

• What does it take to turn knowledge about healthy living into action?
• How do our surroundings affect our choices?  What does it mean to have a soda machine in our school?

These are really challenging topics we will continue to talk about in the coming weeks with our Healers!  We hope this will be one of the issues the students tackle with our youth grants.  We are still fundraising for our youth grants, please donate to help us reach our goal!  Our long-term vision is that next semester's program can focus on youth-led projects for improving the health of our community.  

We also want to use this opportunity to challenge each other with healthy goal setting.  I love this guide from Seattle Children's Hospital:

I've challenged myself this month to be active once a day.  Here's a great video that puts this challenge into perspective!

Please stay tuned for our April activities.  We have some really exciting field trips planned!  Opportunities for amplifying the strengths and beauties in our community are all around us.  

In Peace and Health,
Dr. Malik