Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Groups want Islanders in health jobs
Marshallese students hear about career opportunities
SPRINGDALE — Northwest Arkansas’ growing Pacific Islander community needs more of its own members wearing nurse scrubs, medic uniforms and the white lab coats of doctors and pharmacists, community leaders said this weekend.
The Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and other area schools on Friday and Saturday gave dozens of area Marshallese public school students and their parents a taste of the demands and opportunities they can expect from pursuing a health care career.
The industry is bursting with options, Nia Aitaoto, co-director of the university’s Center for Pacific Islander Health, told the group Friday.
“We want more doctors, we want more nurses, we want more researchers, we want more people in health,” she said, alluding to the centuries of seafaring that populated the Marshall Islands, Hawaii and other Pacific archipelagos. “Any journey, you got to get in the canoe first, right?”
Roughly 12,000 Marshallese and other islanders call Northwest Arkansas home, based on the university’s analysis of school district data and other information. An agreement between the islands and the United States allows its residents to work and live here without visas in return for continued U.S.
military access to the islands’ territory.
Dozens of American nuclear tests, poverty, language barriers and other factors contribute to making cancer, diabetes and other illnesses common among Marshall Islanders, according to the university. Around half of the local community has diabetes and even more are nearing it, for example.
But Marshallese fill only a few of the area’s tens of thousands of health care jobs, said Lucy Capelle, director of the coalition. Dr. Sheldon Riklon, one of two U.S.-trained physicians from the islands in the world, teaches at the university and sees patients at the Community Clinic in Springdale. Nurses and other assistants from the islands work at the university and clinic, too.
Health care pays well and is expected to add more jobs in the coming decade than almost every other industry, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Clinics and hospitals in Northwest Arkansas hire almost all health care graduates immediately because of the growing need, and a bilingual worker will be in even higher demand, speakers told the students.
Several Marshallese patients seek out Riklon specifically because he shares their language and culture. Without such a bridge, patients unfamiliar with English or hesitant to ask a doctor questions might not know to take all of their prescribed medications or clearly understand their health issues, Riklon and others say.
Marshallese involvement in health care is already making progress against those headwinds. Riklon, other Marshallese researchers and the community’s churches have partnered with the university to improve education about diabetes and breastfeeding and encourage healthier diets. Aitaoto travels to the Pacific to oversee public health efforts every few weeks.
Riklon told the students Friday he wasn’t prepared to become a doctor after growing up on the islands, but he persisted through years of preparatory college courses and got into medical school on his second try. He urged the group to seize opportunities he didn’t have, like advanced high school classes and scholarships.
“You’re already preparing” by attending the event, he said.
Several students said they want to follow their elders’ examples. Ashley Limkadre, a recently graduated senior, is attending Northwest Arkansas Community College in the fall to become a registered nurse and would like to work here and in the Pacific as Aitaoto does.
Limkadre said volunteering at the university’s international conference on Pacific Islander health last year inspired her to go into health work. After the community college, she plans to transfer to a university for a bachelor’s degree in nursing and maybe graduate school — “as far as I can,” she said.
The conference gave rundowns on financial aid, prerequisites and which schools teach what. The community college, Northwest Technical Institute and the university can train students to become nursing assistants, nurses or technicians in imaging and emergency medicine, for instance. Local universities offer bachelor’s and graduate degrees for doctors, pharmacists and more.
Jeanne McLachlin, admissions director for the medical sciences university College of Medicine, said the college wants compassionate, curious candidates for its physician programs.
“Those are the sorts of characteristics that make good doctors. It’s not enough to be smart,” she said.
University students and doctors also gave demonstrations on medical basics, like listening to a patient’s lungs and heart.
In some ways, the event gave a push to a boat that’s already sailing. Margaret Petueli, a recent high school who plans to become a pediatric nurse, said she has wanted to go into health care since watching nurses take care of her grandmother in the hospital years ago, and she appreciated hearing Riklon’s story.
“That inspired me even more,” Petueli said.
Clinics and hospitals in Northwest Arkansas hire almost all health care graduates immediately because of the growing need, and a bilingual worker will be in even higher demand, speakers told the students.