Alice Lehman, MD, CTropMed®, Chief Year, July 2020-June 2021

Reflecting on this past year as Global Health Chief that I spent on North American soil, learning among the Sicangu Lakota Oyate, or Rosebud Sioux Tribe in rural South Dakota, I feel incredibly grateful to have the space and place to expand my understanding of Indigenous health in America. Currently our Rosebud resident elective is housed under our “Global Health Elective” for both our pediatrics and internal medicine programs. However, after spending a year of experience in clinical and community work with the tribe, re-learning history from the Indigenous perspective and framing today’s disparate social disparities affecting this population from a settler colonialism’s viewpoint, I believe learning about Indigenous health and history is necessary for all medical providers. This year taught me to look backwards and inwards first before moving forward in solidarity, to find a more equitable, just and antiracist approach to becoming better allies for the promotion of Indigenous health.

The Global Pediatrics department provided the support to develop curriculum, educational opportunities, and increase bidirectional partnership with individual providers at the Indian Health Service(IHS) Rosebud site, the service unit as a system, and within the community through tribal health, a subset of the tribal council which is the governing body of the tribe. Our UMN residents and faculty helped staff the inpatient and outpatient services at Rosebud IHS during a critical provider shortage during the covid19 pandemic, developed public messaging campaigns about covid19 and vaccination, visited schools, helped bring families back into clinic after outpatient numbers dropped during the pandemic, and helped host a youth mental health day with the tribal Wikoni Wacan mental health group. Back home we developed resident curriculum for Rosebud and Indigenous Health, integrated Rosebud medical cases into general pediatric virtual education and hosted the first block education dedicated to better understanding how to promote the health of indigenous children and their families. With the help of Dr. Mary Owen, Dr. Steve Selinksy, and many others from the department and community, we hosted a local community panel with representatives from the Native American Community Clinic (NACC), Indian Health Board of Minneapolis (IHB), Little Earth Residents Association, and Minnesota Indian Women’s Resources Center. Bringing the community and local leaders in to help us become better providers and allies to the indigenous population is our first step in solidarity towards better Indigenous health. We are hoping to strengthen both our medical education and partnerships locally, and with Rosebud in the future. 

Please reach out if you have questions, want to be involved in future endeavors or have interest in collaboration towards improving medical education around this topic. Thank you. Alice Lehman MD lehma154@umn.edu 

Favorite quote: Too many to choose from! So I thought I'd recommend a poem instead - Beautiful Bones by Maggie Smith 

Favorite travel destination: Paris

What the world needs more of: ice cream and tea 

If you weren't a physician you would be: Writer