Dr. Michael Carroll, Transcript Section 8

Community Health Aide Program Project Jukebox

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KAREN: So you just answered my next question. And did you think that the health aide program has been a good thing?

DR. CARROLL: Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, you know, you know, I think some of them were good at trying to do preventative things and help in regards to vaccinations and helping with the Public Health nurse.

At that time, there was a state Public Health nurse that usually would make several visits to the villages, to a village each year and try to do TB screening and monitor tuberculous medicines, vaccinate kids, things like that, and the health aides would help with that and make that program very successful.

Now, the pap smear rate in the villages, even though they may not have electricity, was probably far better than the pap smear rates in Fairbanks because you had a captive audience. The health aide would -- in a village would say, okay, all the women are going to come in and get their pap smears, you know, from nine to three o'clock while the doctor is here. The men didn't even get to come to the clinic at that time. Okay?

And so -- and if somebody didn't show up, the health aide would know who didn't, and oftentimes there had to be a reason why they didn't show up.

Sometimes people didn't want to and they wouldn't be forced to do it, but you know, it was a pretty way -- good way to kind of get the people there and care for the things like that.

KAREN: Sounded like the health aides were pretty committed to their work.

DR. CARROLL: Most of them were really committed. They had done it for a number of years, I think without much pay. They had been asked to or given that responsibility by the Village Councils and were very well respected.

And you know, as I say, they were doing it with, you know, no pay whatsoever just because they realized that something had to be done.

I suspect that how it got started in some villages is, is the doctors realized that, you know, they needed to have some medicines out there for kids that had simple pneumonias and ear infections. And without somebody to control those medicines and dispense it, you know, some of the big problems with ruptured eardrums and the hearing problems and things like that were never going to get dealt with.

KAREN: Back where you talked about the communication and, you know, when they got telephone, while you were involved, did the video conferencing, that hadn't come into play yet, had it?

DR. CARROLL: Oh, no, no. No.

KAREN: That --

DR. CARROLL: No. It was black and white TV in Alaska at that time. And -- and the -- and the television programming was not live, it was sent up on --

KAREN: Right.

DR. CARROLL: -- Alaska Airlines, the evening news was sent up on a tape and played after the plane arrived.

KAREN: Because now, don't they have video -- you can -- doctors and health aides can, in some places, they can see each other and talk to each other.

DR. CARROLL: Yeah. Some communities that have the video teleconferencing, where the patient can be there and the doctor can see them, and the nurses or health aides can look back and forth. But no, we were just trying to get understandable verbal communication. And there were times that that was not even applicable.

KAREN: All right. So the satellite --

DR. CARROLL: The satellite.

KAREN: -- was as advanced as it got while you were there?

DR. CARROLL: That was advanced as it got. Yeah. And that was just a one-year thing that went away after that.

KAREN: Oh, it did?

DR. CARROLL: Uh-hum (affirmative). And then, you know, after that I left so I can't tell you what happened in the next few years.

KAREN: Yeah. Because I've seen photographs of the satellite dishes in some of the villages, and was that that demo project here?

DR. CARROLL: Yes. Uh-hum. Uh-hum.

KAREN: And you had mentioned that you had published an article.

DR. CARROLL: It wasn't so much that I published an article, there was an article that was published in the New England Journal with the authors, primary authors being those from Stanford --

KAREN: Okay.

DR. CARROLL: -- that dealt with satellite telecommunications.

KAREN: And that would have been in '72?

DR. CARROLL: It was probably '73, maybe.

KAREN: Okay.

DR. CARROLL: New England Journal of Medicine.

KAREN: Okay.

DR. CARROLL: It could have been '74, but, you know, '72, '73, you know, in that era probably.

KAREN: Okay.