Gloria Park, Transcript Section 11

Community Health Aide Program Project Jukebox

Gloria Park,
Transcript Section 11

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DR. PARK: Do you want any more names of people?

KAREN: Whatever comes to mind.

DR. PARK: Okay. Don Dippe' is an opthalmologist in town who was with the Public Health Service for years, who could tell you a lot about the development of the eye program.

And -- and it is different. That was another thing that I had to do initially was learn how to do a very brief refraction of eyes for glasses.
And like somebody said one time, you know, we were kind of balking at trying to do -- fit eyes. We had a lot of things to do without trying to make glasses.

And I asked somebody one time, I said, with -- I said, with what little training we've got, we're apt to make mistakes. And he says, if you can make them see better at all, they are not going to worry about mistakes.

So along with our other supplies, we carried a refraction kit of lenses. And sometimes it was almost a matter of reading glasses, show them a few lenses and see which ones they liked best. So that was part of our program.
Let's see. Who else is in here. Robert Fortuine has done a lot of work.

KAREN: Yeah, I know the name.

DR. PARK: Have you interviewed him?

KAREN: Huh-uh (negative). I know his books.

DR. PARK: And Bob Fraser, but he's -- he's not real well, so I don't know, although he might -- might be available. He worked with the TB program for many, many years. Lives here in town. Retired.

And then, like I say, the one on the committee that got -- got to doing most of the dictation had to be the chief of the committee, which was a pharmacist. Keene -- what did we say?

KAREN: Whitaker.

DR. PARK: Whitaker. Excuse me. Okay. Ron Perkins is a sanitation engineer, and of course, we rapidly got involved with water and sewage and sanitation in the villages.

And had travelling sanitarians, but they were like us, they couldn't have somebody out all the time if there were only a one or two-man office. And -- but he -- he was involved with writing a lot of the programs for their -- for their sanitation aides.

And -- and it wasn't long before we had both a health aide and a sanitation aide. And when -- at that time the teachers were getting aides, and the Public Health nurses were helping to find medical aides at the time.

And dental aides. And Dave Templin's been very involved with those kind of programs, too. He still works, makes a few clinics for the Native Hospital.

KAREN: So this book that -- the health aides come to Anchorage and for their training and they would use this book. Did a copy of it go back --

DR. PARK: Yeah.

KAREN: -- to the village with them so they had it as a reference?

DR. PARK: Uh-hum (affirmative).

KAREN: Okay. What kind of response did you get from the health aides? Did they like this book, or --

DR. PARK: The -- they -- a lot of them felt overwhelmed at first. You know, they didn't have the background even to really read it that well, some of them. But they -- they wanted something. And initially, they wanted a few medicines and a few bandages and, you know, very abbreviated kits.

And then as they got some training and all, they needed a manual. And there was a manual, I think -- well, anything between this program and this program was --

KAREN: '61 it says.

DR. PARK: -- wasn't in a good format. And of course, this was -- this one was way back.

KAREN: That '44. Yeah.

DR. PARK: And then that was to help some of the teachers of the training program.