What aspect of Ohana One are you most proud of?
The Social justice aspect that is inherent in providing surgical access to under-resourced communities and countries, is by far, the element that most attracts me to this work.
What do you hope to see Ohana Once accomplish this year?
On a recent Ohana One collaboration in Africa, it became glaringly apparent that you can’t work in a post-colonial world in a missionary vein. It is offensive to countries who have fought and struggled to reassemble their origins and identity after hundreds of years of occupation. It is presumptive to assert that we are there or qualified to fix something.
What happens when you instead approach international work as part of a collaboration, you take the sting out of the idea that you are from an “advanced” society, white people coming in to “fix” things. We all know, in this world the mess that has been created on a global level is the responsibility, primarily, of the richest and whitest countries of the world. When countries try to step in and “fix” the mess they usually make a bigger mess. So it’s really important to emphasize the collaborative nature of working peer to peer as Ohana One does. It is a really interesting idea that you can create something like Doctors without Borders in a digital space, a boundary-less environment where doctors can do the work that they are passionate about. When you can take the transactional nature out of the surgical experience, surgeons are able to operate in a purely medical and healing space.
What special skills or passion do you bring to Ohana One?
The skills that I have honed over the past four decades of networking, analyzing, and researching along with my documentary film work allowed me to come in and say we need to document the amazing things that are happening here.
What do you wish people knew about Ohana One?
The story that is really compelling to me is the relationships between the doctors from all these different countries. There are these deep abiding friendship that are being cultivated in the neutral territory that is Medicine. Being able to create a safe digital and virtual space where people can learn and advance their skills is something special. There is so much potential with the relationships that are being formed, combined with the technologies Ohana One is adapting for surgical education. This is groundbreaking work.
Who do you want us to interview next?
Board member Jay Roach is lovely and articulate and I think it would be a really interesting interview. I also encourage you to talk to team members Marvee Turk and Peter. They are both really insightful and it would be good to hear from them as well.
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