Chin is board-certified by the American Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the American Osteopathic Board of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He is medical director of rehabilitation services at Genesis Medical Center in Davenport, IA.

Chance is board-certified by the American Osteopathic Board of Family Physicians. She is medical director of the emergency department at Boone County Hospital in Boone, IA. She also is an adjunct faculty member at DMU and a staff emergency doctor for Physician Healthcare Services Emergency Physicians.

Stoken is a fellow of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. A member of the DMU Board of Trustees, she is board-certified by the American Osteopathic Board of Rehabilitation Medicine, the American Board of Holistic Medicine and the American Board of Independent Medical Examiners. She is in private practice in Des Moines and is affiliated with three central Iowa hospitals.

DMU alumni who were elected trustees on the IOMA board were Bruce Ricker, D.O.’83, of Mount Ayr; Terri Plundo, D.O. ’92, FACOFP, interim medical director of the DMU Clinic, assistant professor and clerkship director of family medicine; and Stephen Ellestad, D.O.’88, of Altoona.

Other board representatives who were not up for election this year are Michael Thompson, D.O.’02, Pella; Mary Malcom, D.O.’01, DeWitt; and Thomas Snyder, D.O.’78, FACOI, Bettendorf. IOMA board trustees also include immediate past president Timothy Piearson, D.O.’02, of Greenfield and past president Adrian Woolley, D.O.’95, assistant professor in osteopathic medicine at DMU.

IOMA members thanked DMU students Sara O’Meara, D.O.’14, and Akash Shah, D.O.’14, for their service over the past year as ex officio members of the IOMA board. Elected to a one-year term on the board was Dustin McCann, D.O.’10. He is in the second year of his internal medicine residency at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines.

The Iowa Osteopathic Medical Association, founded in 1898 and headquartered in Des Moines, represents the approximately 1,000 osteopathic physicians practicing in the state.

The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes an outstanding osteopathic family physician who shows career-long service to patients, the profession and to ACOFP. Founded in 1950, ACO FP is the national professional organization of more than 20,000 practicing osteopathic family physicians and physicians-in-training.

A past member of the DMU Board of Trustees, McNerney is the director of medical education and a program director for the St. John Providence Health System-Osteopathic Division in Warren, MI. He is also the secretary for the American Osteopathic Board of Family Physicians and president of the Macomb County Osteopathic Medical Association.

McNerney was the ACOFP president in 1999-2000. Ten new ACOFP state chapters were initiated during his term. He has overseen a decade of expansion in the number of osteopathic family medicine residencies and in the quality of those residencies through the ACOFP Committee on Education and Evaluation.

McNerney also has chaired five of the American Osteopathic Association’s (AOA) bureaus and councils, including those for osteopathic education, program and trainee review, international medical education and physicians health. He is currently the AOA liaison to the Council of Education for the American Academy of Family Physicians.

McNerney’s career as an osteopathic educator started as a student preceptor in Wall Lake, IA. He later was the associate dean for clinical education and the Osteopathic Postdoctoral Training Institute at Touro University in California.

This humble creature ’s remarkable ability to process organic matter into compost fertilized a seemingly far-out idea that’s grown into a network of men and women who want to help those in need to help themselves.

“It’s relationships that are at the center of this,” says Elizabeth Schmick, a third-year DMU osteopathic medical student.

The Community Interfaith Worm Project (CIWP) sprouted from her husband Greg’s horticulture background and the couple’s residence at one of Des Moines’ three Catholic Worker Houses during Elizabeth’s first two years at DMU. Catholic Worker Houses are independent centers, not affiliated with the Catholic Church, in communities around the world to provide friendship, meals and other assistance to all.

“For many people who come here, this may be the only community they have,” Elizabeth says. “They can hang out, get their mail here, use the phone, take showers, have a meal. We work to make it easier for people to make good decisions.”

The thousands of meals served annually at the house where the Schmicks lived generate a lot of “green” waste, ripe for red wigglers to work their magic. After the worms digest organic matter, they leave behind excretions called castings, which stimulate super plant growth.

The couple had grown worms for composting in their native Portland, OR, so it was natural for them to do so in Des Moines. They added a dimension, though, designed to benefit Catholic Worker House guests – to employ those without jobs to fill teabag-sized organza sacks with the stuff to sell to gardeners and other plant-lovers.

That launched three years of experimenting with the product and packaging, learning pertinent agricultural regulations and networking with like-minded organizations to find a market.

“When we first started, we had all these nice, rustic bags. But this stuff is so alive, it ate them,” Greg recalls. Now the packaging materials better contain the castings and allow them to “breathe” to preserve their effectiveness. To ensure adequate quantities of castings, they are no longer produced in the Catholic Worker House basement, but rather supplied by a local farmer.

What didn’t change during CIWP’s evolution was the philosophy that started it.

“When we first looked at the project, we thought, ‘Yes! This creates jobs, and it’s recycling.’ But that isn’t the point. We didn’t want to get into a business,” Greg says. “This is about re-establishing relationships – with the earth, among all of us and in our relationship with our creator.”

Elizabeth points to the “transformation” she hopes people will experience when they purchase the castings. “When you do, you provide work and self-value for people who otherwise might not find unemployment. You also do something good for your plants and the environment,” she says. “And when you are watering your plants with it, we hope you’ll say a prayer for the person who assembled the bags.”

The power of worm poop

Annette Canada gets to work in a small classroom in the basement of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Des Moines. She has a tub of worm castings, a pile of “teabags” and a stack of small paper sacks, each of which will hold three teabags. She places a CIWP sticker on the front and attaches instructions for use on the back. The finishing touch: a stamp on the paper sack that includes the phrase, “Made by Annette.” She is paid for the finished product, on which she is clearly sold.

“My oldest grandson gave me a plant, but the flower didn’t grow,” says Canada, CIWP’s first castings bagger. “I put some of the castings on it, and the flower got so big, the plant wouldn’t fit on my table.”

For Canada and others involved in the project, the power of worm poop far exceeds its perqs for plants. She once received a letter from a woman in Arizona, who’d somehow acquired CIWP castings, expressing gratitude to Canada for producing the product.

“She was telling me what the dirt does to her plants, and she sent along a photo of her flowers,” Canada recalls. “I just cried when I saw those flowers.”

St. Paul’s came to support CIWP when congregation member Helen Dagley met Greg Schmick at a “Hope for the Hungry” conference in Des Moines. She connected the Schmicks with St. Paul’s deacon, John Doherty.

“This is the kind of ministry we want to be involved in, with what the project does for Annette, the environment and in community outreach,” Doherty says.

In addition to CIWP’s goals to create jobs, decrease environmental waste and encourage spirituality, it also seeks “to help other organizations raise money for projects that promote a more just and loving society,” states its website, http://worm project.wordpress.com. Organizations can purchase pre-assembled castings bags for $3 per package and then sell them for $5.

Organizations also can order kits of unassembled materials for $1.50 per finished bag if they agree to hire and support an assembler who struggles to find work – the website suggests people “who are homeless, undereducated, formerly imprisoned, suffering with mental illness, struggling to overcome addictions or haunted by the horrors of violence, abuse and war” – and then pay that person at least $1 per completed package. That lets the organization raise more money while interacting with someone its members might not otherwise meet.

“It’s all about people trying to live their faith a little bit more and to get to know people in their community on a personal level,” Elizabeth Schmick says. “Everybody loses when marginalization occurs.”

“A catalyst for something bigger”

Cultivating the Community Interfaith Worm Project to help people help themselves are Beth Runcie, D.O.’13; Helen Dagley; Annette Canada; John Doherty; Elizabeth Schmick, D.O.’13; and Greg Schmick.

Beth Runcie worked as a graphic designer for nine years before enrolling in DMU’s osteopathic medical program. That transition became serendipitous when she met Elizabeth Schmick at orientation: After Runcie learned about the worm castings project, she contributed her skills to design its logo and support its communication efforts.

“The project has so many facets. It invites people in from various groups,” she explains. “If you like ‘green,’ it’s good for the environment. It can be a fundraiser for your group. It connects people in a way that brings awareness and makes it hard for you to turn your back on others. Everyone understands it from a different perspective.”

Runcie and the Schmicks are quick to point out that CIWP is not about them. Intent to keep the project “spiritually centered,” they made connections that established the project in Davenport, IA, and likely will spark ones in other states. Beth’s and Elizabeth’s third-year rotations may limit their involvement in the project, at least short-term, but that’s fine with them.

“The idea is to start something that can continue on its own,” Runcie says. “It’s gone from a good idea to a catalyst for something bigger.”

The two DMU students took CIWP to that higher level in March when they were accepted by the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), an annual conference established by President Bill Clinton to engage the next generation of leaders on college campuses around the world. More than 1,000 students from all 50 states, 82 countries and more than 300 universities participated at this year’s event, held in Washington, DC.

CIWP was announced as Schmick and Runcie’s “commitment” during a session on environment and climate change. For CGI U’s exchange fair, they created a display and recruited Elizabeth’s sister, Heidi, to transport from her home in Virginia a live worm farm and plants grown with the worm castings. When they arrived, however, they discovered a communications snafu left them without a table at the fair. It was another serendipitous turn of events.

“We showed up with all these plants and stuff,” Elizabeth says. “Fortunately, the staff got us a table that turned out to have the best location. It was another sign we’re just vehicles. I had a sore throat from talking to so many people.”

The story of CIWP, true to its mission, is the story of entrepreneurial, altruistic people who took a leap of faith on an idea to benefit others. “Beth and I have so much fun with this project,” says Elizabeth, now back in Portland on rotation. “With the people involved, we can do whatever we want. We’re like a bunch of 11-year-olds building a fort.”

TO LEARN MORE about CIWP or to order it’s product, visit wormproject.wordpress.com or email Helen Dagley at helen@communitywormproject.org

Hiral Patel, center, paved the way for DMU students to serve in Honduras.

Patel, who finished her second year of DMU’s osteopathic medical program in May, figured she would turn her interest in medicinal biology into an eventual Ph.D. Then Berkeley classmate Daisy Leon-Martinez talked her into joining her on a medical service trip to Honduras.

“It changed the context of my life,” Patel says.

UC-Berkeley’s partner for the trip was the-then relatively new Global Brigades, which has since become the world’s largest student-led global health and sustainable development organization. While it now has sites in three countries and nine programs in areas including the environment, microfinance and law, at the time it was focused on providing medical care to severely underserved people in Honduras.

“We brought some physicians and medications and saw 300 to 800 patients a day,” Patel recalls. “But I felt I gained more than the community did. Update I was a little dissatisfied with the scope of what we could do there. There is a real need for the services we provided, but we wanted to think of something that would complement them.”

In 2008, Patel, Leon- Martinez and fellow “brigader” John Lee launched an ambitious targeted effort to help bridge the gaps between Global Brigades service trips. Their brainstorm: train local residents in one Honduran village to provide basic medical care and public health education.

“We presented our ideas at Berkeley, got the local Kiwanis to support us and put in our own money,” Patel says. “Global Brigades empowers you if you have ideas. We got their okay to take the education module to Honduras.”

Once they arrived, they walked door-to-door to learn who the local leaders were. They found four individuals who were interested in the module.

D.O. students Justin Chaltry and Hiral Patel work in a Honduran clinic.

“It was very grassroots. We sat at a table in a church, using salt and balloons – ‘This is what a lung looks like when it’s constricted,’” Patel says. “We engaged them in a partnership and constantly adjusted what we were doing.”

Patel, Leon-Martinez and Lee spent the next two years trekking to and from Honduras, coming home to work out of Lee’s one-bedroom studio, network and raise money for the program. In 2009, Global Brigades gave them $2,000 for a pilot project. They also presented it as a “commitment” at that year’s Clinton Global Initiative University, an annual conference established by President Bill Clinton to engage the next generation of leaders on college campuses around the world.

Their success didn’t occur without a few bumps. The CIA estimates that 65 percent of Hondurans live below the poverty line; average family income is less than $1 a day. Patel and her colleagues had to overcome cultural and language barriers, learn how to navigate the network of non-governmental organizations and win the trust of local villagers.

“I’ve been stuck in a military coup. Once Daisy and I had to pretend to be pregnant to get out after curfew,” Patel recalls. “Once we saw a bus that had rolled downhill and we were the only ones there to help, so we made slings out of our t-shirts…Our naiveté really worked for us.”

The community health worker program the three Berkeley grads started now op-  erates in 11 Honduran communities, with expansion planned in four more. Global Brigades employs a Honduran physician, coordinator and an American intern to work in country. Patel and her colleagues developed an online database to monitor the communities and address specific health needs. Amid that progress, what strikes her the most is the spirit of the Honduran people.

“It’s the third-poorest country in the western world, but the people’s positivity really appealed to me,” she says. “Every time we leave, they have a huge mass to make sure we get home safely. We play off that energy. That has helped overcome the frustrations.”

Patel will have a different experience this summer as one of two DMU students, along with Jennifer Wu, D.O.’14, to intern with the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Working with a very large health organization will add a new dimension to her work in sustainable development.

“As we become more of a global society, boundaries are melting,” she says. “It’s important that we have physicians who are engaging in such personal relationships, to be culturally sensitive, so we can be global physicians.”

Interprofessional team helps in Honduras

Hiral Patel had multiple options when she applied to medical school, but she chose DMU because of its vibrant global health program. She’s helped make it even better.

As an undergraduate at the University of California-Berkeley, she helped establish a discussion-based course on various aspects of global health; last year, she and classmates Abigail Koker and Alexis Beinlich worked with Yogesh Shah, M.D., associate dean of global health, and Pam Duffy, Ph.D., P.T., assistant professor in the public health program, to establish a similar Global Health Learning Collaborative at DMU.

Patel also connected DMU with the nonprofit organization Global Brigades, making possible the University’s first medical service trips to Honduras in 2011 and this past March.

“Hiral is such a strong leader and a good teacher,” Shah says. “The success of our Honduras trips has been because of her.”

DMU’s latest service trip to the Central American country was its largest, with 33 students from seven of the University’s nine programs; four Drake University pharmacy students; four DMU and Drake faculty and adjunct faculty members; two physicians, a social worker and a medical resident from Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines; and a Spanish instructor. The diverse group inspired the opportunity for more than medical service.

Alumnus Kevin Ware seizes a teachable moment with Chaltry, Patel and Larissa Hoover, PA’13.

“This trip was the best interprofessional education opportunity we’ve had at the University,” says Kendall Reed, D.O., FACO S, FACS, dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine. He accompanied the group, as did DMU alumni Kevin Ware, D.O.’73, ABFM, and Larry Braver, D.O.’77.

Prior to the group’s departure, Jennifer Wu, D.O.’14, took the lead in collecting donations of medications and supplies; the group hauled 38 extra-large duffel bags full of the stuff to Honduras. In country, Patel and Sarah Karalus, D.O.’14, scheduled students to work with different health care providers in a variety of roles. The brigaders typically rose at 5:30 a.m. to travel to clinics, most conducted in schools; they concluded each day discussing interprofessional issues, reviewing cases and packing up supplies for the next day. The group also visited an orphanage, provided patient education and supported dental care stations.

“I’ve done lots of medical brigading, and I can say this was one of the best groups we’ve had,” Patel says of the DMU students. “We had the longest days, but no one complained. Plus they paid money to go. That says something about the DMU community.”

The DMU brigade treated an estimated 1,000 patients. Reed praises Global Brigades for providing impeccably organized transportation, housing and security for the group. That partnership will make possible an annual DMU service trip to Honduras, an opportunity he hopes more alumni will consider joining.

Reed also applauds the DMU students who participated.

“Students from all our colleges were nothing short of outstanding,” he says. “It was a dramatic cultural opportunity for them, and they jumped right in.”

CPMS students aspire…

…while Foot & Ankle Surgery Symposium faculty, many of whom are DMU alumni, and other podiatric physicians inspire their future colleagues to achieve excellence.

DMU’s fourth annual Foot & Ankle Surgery Symposium hit peak stride this year in attendance, stature of its speakers and the myriad engaging discussions it sparked. Held April 27-28 on campus, the symposium drew 139 students and 64 podiatric professionals whose participation earned them up to 12 continuing medical education hours.

Symposium program co-chairs were R. Tim Yoho, D.P.M., FACFAS, dean of the College of Podiatric Medicine and Surgery, and Michael Lee, D.P.M.’96, FACFAS, a podiatrist with Capital Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in Des Moines. Speakers included several DMU alumni and faculty as well as Michelle Butterworth, D.P.M., FACFAS, president of the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons and a podiatric physician with Pee Dee Foot Center in Kingstree, SC.

DMU’s fifth annual Foot & Ankle Surgery Symposium will occur April 19-20, 2013.