Alumni Spotlight: Karen Dugas '05
Karen Dugas has shaped her career around a simple guiding principle that every person has an inherent value that they bring to their interactions. “We focus on honoring what the individual patient brings. We emphasize that every person has something to offer. We start with what people know, what their skills are and try to build on that”.
Karen is Program Director at Packard Community Clinic in Ann Arbor, a ‘health care home’ for insured and uninsured Washtenaw County community members. In addition to fulfilling its mission to provide health care for all, regardless of ability to pay, the founders, Board, and staff at Packard Community Clinic have a vision for excellence in primary health care that fully integrates mental health care and health promotion.
Karen says she is extremely proud to work at Packard Health, “It is rare, especially in this area, to be able to provide quality health care to anyone, regardless of their status.” She explained further, “The founders created the clinic to serve the whole community in a way that no other organization does. You can see the same physician for as long as you want. It doesn’t matter what the mechanism is to pay for your health care. That provider is going to know your case, what has worked for you, what you need to work on… It’s that relationship that makes a difference in high quality care.”
She also speaks very highly of the leadership, referring to the founder, Jerry Walden as “their own Paul Farmer”. When Dr. Walden retired in ‘06, he left the clinic in the hands of Executive Director, Kim Kratz. “He did this great thing by creating this organization, and now we’re trying to infuse more public health in this model of high quality care for everyone”. She feels that Kim has the ability to "take this excellent organization and make it phenomenal”.
Karen has recently implemented a community health program at a nearby public housing community nearby. They have hired and trained three community health workers to be the health advocate for others in their neighborhood. Karen says that she “can’t wait to see what is possible to expand the program”.
The community health worker model is something Karen has become very familiar with over the past few years. Prior to taking a position as health educator at Packard Community Clinic, Karen was the Capacity Building Director at Migrant Health Promotion. She trained and provided guidance to other health centers across the U.S. on how to start up a peer health education (Promotora) program for migrant farm workers. She also oversaw a local Promotora program, which was run in partnership with a local health center in Temperance, Michigan. She says she enjoyed the experience because she learned more about how agriculture in the US operates on a deeper level, especially about the sacrifices that the migrant farm workers have to make in order to put food on all of our tables. “Once you get to know the farmworkers, it means a lot more ”.
The Link caught up with Karen when she had a spare moment to talk to find out more about her career and how she was influenced by HBHE.
What led you to a career in public health/health education?
As an undergrad, I worked at an organization called Refugee Services in Lansing, in the resettlement division. We picked people up from the airport when they arrived from a different country, we helped them get an apartment, shopped for food, and signed them up for social services. Throughout that process, I noticed that people were coming with a lot of health concerns that were unresolved; most of them could have been prevented. It encouraged me to learn how state policies can affect health and led me to pursue a career in public health.
How do you think HBHE helped contribute to your career choices?
Before I came to HBHE I was searching for ways to approach some of the problems I had been encountering [at Refugee Services], and then, “voila, hbhe”. The theories were all there. HBHE gave me a good foundation in public health programming. I really appreciated that I was able to tailor classes to my interests. I was able to take classes that spoke to both my interest in international health, as well as with maternal and child health.
What skills are most important for graduating students/advice for graduating students?
The summer internship is a great opportunity to get some practical experience in the community. Having the opportunity to devote to community based public health is extremely valuable. In general, enjoy your classes, enjoy your time and get as much practical experience as possible.
What do you remember most fondly about HBHE?
I really appreciated being in an atmosphere where I was with people also who like to learn, and more specifically liked to learn about this preventive and proactive approach to health.
Also, the group of friends I found. I was expecting my second child during my second year. There were about five others in the school who had young children, and we tried do of our group projects together. Our study groups were like play dates. It was easy to bond with others in similar situations. We still get together with the kids.