AMPATH Alumni: Shannon Kelley Oates, MD, FACE and Larry Oates
When medical resident Shannon Kelley Oates, MD, FACE, learned about a new initiative Indiana University (IU) was starting in Kenya in 1990, she knew she had to go.
Larry and Shannon Kelley Oates in Kenya in 2007.
“I called Bob (Einterz) and said ‘I’m going to Kenya, you have to take me,’” she recalled. “I told him I need cultural sensitivity, obviously, and I was too opinionated and needed to learn about the rest of the world. I wanted to learn how to make the world a better place.”
Dr. Oates became the second trainee from IU to practice in Kenya. As a third-year resident in internal medicine, she cared for patients at the hospital in Eldoret during a two-month elective. She worked alongside IU’s Dr. Bob Einterz, a founder of what would become the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) now serving a population of more than 8 million Kenyans.
Newly married, her husband Larry came along too. He found himself building a chicken coop, doing home repairs and other needed tasks at IU’s first small hostel in Kenya, something he hadn’t quite trained for during his studies of journalism and law at IU.
Over 30 years, the couple’s life has been influenced by that Kenya trip and they’ve both continued to give back to AMPATH. “It was so different back then. We would always start clinic by visiting the pharmacy and see what hypertensives or antibiotics we had for the day. Maybe we’d have to trade in penicillin for a bottle of insulin, or have someone sell a goat to get what we needed from the pharmacy,” said Shannon. “It’s just amazing to see the change and growth of AMPATH. We've been watching the whole time, of course, it’s amazing.”
The Oates point to the other programs that AMPATH initiated such as income generating programs, food programs and family preservation initiatives as indicators that AMPATH’s early leaders had the vision to create a strong foundation for sustainability and success. ”I think that there's never been any doubt that we were going to do great things, and it's been incredibly impressive the things that we've been able to do over the decades,” said Larry.
The Oates family and AMPATH friends in Kenya in 2007.
Larry is a self-employed business management consultant with previous ventures in retail and real estate management. Over the last decade he has applied his professional skills as a board member advising the business and legal side of the AMPATH partnership.
Shannon’s experience in Kenya has shaped her professional career as an endocrinologist and guru of information technology for IU Health Arnett in West Lafayette. “Part of what the Kenya program helped shape me for was being able to see the world as community and understand my place in it,” she continued. “I think about our community, not just as our own household, but the community of the world.”
Now as associate chief medical information officer for IU Health Arnett and a practicing endocrinologist, Shannon took many of the lessons to heart, such as making care as patient-centered as possible. “I’ve seen we can deliver better care sometimes in Kenya, because you get the pharmacist and the social worker and economic support all right there together. Here it’s harder sometimes to access all that,” she said.
Her holistic, patient-centered approach to care and pursuit of sustainable systems of health led to work implementing virtual health platforms, data systems and clinical research. “Years ago I raised my hand when they asked who wanted to lead efforts starting telehealth for IU Health Arnett. Now I’m the physician champion for all things IT,” Dr. Oates continued. “I’d had a patient with type 1 diabetes who drives hours and takes three days off from work just for an appointment with us. It seemed like a no brainer.”
Over the years, Shannon and Larry have both remained committed to giving back to AMPATH and the IU School of Medicine, as well as other causes important to them. Above all, they believe in giving back to the community from which they’ve received so much and that all people have the right to quality health care.