Workshop #4

Utilizing unique talents and skills bestowed by God is central to living a missional life. By recognizing and embracing these gifts, we are empowered to make a meaningful difference—particularly by providing much needed dental care to those in need.

Dr. Suh is the President and Founder of Smile Unto Him, a free dental clinic dedicated to restoring oral health for those unable to access or afford regular care. Beyond meeting physical needs, this service aims to renew faith; it serves to renew faith for both patients and volunteers, offering a tangible expression of compassion and support.

Sue is an endodontist at VA Loma Linda Dental Clinic. Sue is the founder of Radix Endodontics and was senior endodontist until the year 2023. She graduated from one of the leading universities in Latin America, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, School of Dentistry in 1990, and completed her endodontics residency at the University of Southern California in 2013. In July of 2020, Sue joined UCLA School of Dentistry’s Postdoctoral Endodontics department as a lecturer.

Over the years, Sue has been involved in the community through outreach and volunteer events, heading international mission trips to Thailand and Cambodia and taking part in events hosted by local organizations such as the free dental clinic run by UC San Diego’s Pre-Dental Society and Lestonnac Free Clinic. Furthermore, she was a volunteering dentist for Continuing Promise and Pacific Partnership, the US Navy’s humanitarian, dental, medical, veterinarian, and engineering efforts throughout the Indo-Pacific Region and Central America.

In her free time, she enjoys playing cello for her church’s worship team and spending time with her dogs.

Climate change is happening whether politicians or other citizens (especially those living in developed, industrialized countries) want to believe it or not and current studies are proving how detrimental it is to health. Health care providers, researchers and public health scholars need to collaborate together to prove that climate change has ill-effects on populations, especially vulnerable ones. The first part of this paper will introduce areas that are directly affected by climate change in order to show the vastness of this problem. The next parts of the paper will show how climate change affects certain vulnerable populations. The main purpose of this paper is to show how working together can raise awareness of the detriments that climate change is causing to unborn babies and vulnerable populations who are not able to help themselves, such as those living on the Pacific islands. It was ascertained from literature review that there is anarray of effects from climate change on health. The methods used in this paper was developing a PICOT question then searching the AT Still University Library database to find three supporting articles. The results of the critical analysis on these three articles concluded that there are ill-effects of toxic air particles to unborn babies, affecting their respiratory tract the first few years of life. More results showed extreme effects on health of the people and the ecosystems of the Pacific islands. Another study showed the impact of that awareness.

Dr. Zamora currently works as the Director of Inter-Professional Education at UCR School of Medicine and is clinical faculty. She is clinically a certified physician assistant (PA-C) and has a Doctorate of Health Science in Global Medicine from AT Still University. She has seven years of teaching experience in classroom settings as well as five years in higher education and as a clinical preceptor. She trained in medicine at the University of Southern California (USC), Keck School of Medicine, Primary Care Physician Assistant Program. She has clinical experience in pediatric, family and urgent care medicine and she currently works at Upland Medical Center. After precepting and guest lecturing for USC, she went on to help develop the PA program of California Baptist University (CBU MSPAS) from August 2015 through July 2020 as a founding faculty member. She coordinated/interviewed all guest lecturers, new faculty and personally taught across most of the clinical courses (especially in the clinical medicine and clinical skills courses, as well as women’s health, pediatrics, pharmacology and research). She also designed and executed the live model exam-program, OSCE exams, simulations, hands-on workshops and incorporated inter-professional education (IPE) and inter-professional practice at CBU and the University of La Verne. She continues to love teaching in the classroom and out in the field, especially taking students out of their comfort zones to various street medicine sites and many outreaches.

What is a patient? vs. What does it mean to be a patient?

It’s easy to practice healthcare focused on the first question. But perhaps you want to better address the latter question? Come to this talk where we’ll address the following 3 questions:

1) How do I integrate my faith into my practice of healthcare?

2) Is it ethical to do spiritual care?

3) How do I start going about spiritual care?

Dr. Wai is a Combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics (Med-Peds) physician at Loma Linda University in Southern California. He has been involved with CMDA since his first year of medical school and continued to host the LLU student group at his home. He is passionate about raising up the next generation of Christian healthcare professionals as a faculty member at Loma Linda University.

Dr. John Tannous is a graduate of the University of Arizona College of Medicine. After completing his pediatric residency, John started the American dream of private practice in suburban Phoenix. However, God had other plans and led John, his wife, and two young sons to Kunming, China in 2001. Over the next 20 years, the Tannous family served the poor, orphaned, and marginalized in southwest China. They also added two daughters, the youngest of whom was adopted. Dr. Tannous spent two “sabbatical” years working in inner-city Chicago. After navigating the initial COVID pandemic in China, Dr. Tannous returned to the US with his family in 2021. He now works in a Los Angeles FQHC serving a primarily Asian community.