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Improving American Indian Health

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Abstract

In this autobiographical chapter, we have focused on the parts of our lives most likely to provide a unique perspective for health care professionals. By describing certain types of personal and professional experiences, we aim to encourage and inform medical students and physicians interested in social change. For those in the medical profession, we hope that our stories will stimulate some of you to seek innovative ways to identify and prioritize health problems and to improve medical care. In the hopes that readers may benefit, we have included not only successes but mistakes. We have never perceived our work as requiring major sacrifices. On the contrary, we have enjoyed the cross-cultural relationships with American Indians, the challenge and gratification of helping to improve medical care on a community-wide basis, and the outdoor life-style afforded by the rural locations where we have lived. We have chosen to write in the third person to enable us to express ourselves as individuals rather than as a unit.

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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Welty, E.R., Welty, T.K. (1996). Improving American Indian Health. In: Bassuk, E.L. (eds) The Doctor-Activist. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6032-0_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6032-0_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-45267-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-6032-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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