From Guam to Baltimore and Back: SOM Student Is on a Critical Mission to Help His Island Home
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As a 16-year-old from Guam, Austin Kim watched his grandmother fight for her life in an intensive care unit after she suffered a severe heart attack and found his family caught in a devastating reality of island health care. Doctors presented an impossible choice: keep her on Guam with limited care options or risk transferring her to the Philippines for surgery she might not survive the journey to receive.
Now a third-year medical student at the School of Medicine, Kim carries that moment with him as he pursues a path that will eventually lead him back to his island home.
Kim has become involved with Chålan Åmte, an organization whose name translates to “road to healing” in Chamorro, the language of the Indigenous people of Guam. The group comprises about 50 members, mostly medical students from the US territory who understand the island’s health care struggles.