Washington: One of the largest ethnic professional organisations representing some 100,000 Indian American physicians is trying to involve the younger generation even as it looks at new ways of giving back to the motherland. Dr Seema Jain, who would take over as president of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) next June, would like to continue the current India projects even as it works with the Indian health ministry to come up with something new that would continue over the long term. "We have the Sevak project, a pilot project for access to care for the villages in India, some economic projects and 17 charity clinics all over India," Jain, a board certified psychiatrist, who came to the US from India when she was 19. One of the projects that will be taken up this year in India will be dealing with trauma, mainly brain damage, in road accidents, she said.
Jain would also like the organisation to spread its wings and go mainstream along with Americans, getting into academics and involving young physicians, students and residents in its activities.
"We want more of a digital AAPI - newsletters, Twitter, Facebook. With AAPI getting more into social networking, academics also want to get involved with it," she said. "It should not be a regional ethnic type of organisation. It should be coming up towards the mainstream. That's my goal," she said. Her second goal is to make sure that academicians come. "We want to have medical scientific seminars and lifetime achievements to be recognised to attract academicians."
As the new secretary, Gautam Samadder, president & CEO of Columbus Sleep Consultants, also considers going mainstream and involving the younger generation of Indian-American doctors as the key challenges. "When AAPI was first formed (in 1982) it was based on immigrant physicians trained in India facing a lot of challenges of discrimination in hospitals. As we have evolved with our kids in medical colleges, we have infiltrated the American system of medicine." "Our goal and mission are slowly changing from discrimination to becoming part of mainstream organised medicine so that it's not only better for our kids, but for Indians and for the community as a whole," Samadder said.
