Breakout 2, Saturday, Feb. 25 10am

In the secular workplace God wants to use all of us to make a difference for Him in the world. Dr. Parsa will discuss the unique position we are in as physicians and healthcare workers to make an impact for the Kingdom. He will discuss creative, outside the box ways God can use us on a regular basis for His purposes through medicine regardless of the context in which we see patients

Dr. Parsa is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Medical Education for the Department of Emergency Medicine, Paul L Foster School of Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, where he and his pediatrician wife have served as the CMDA campus advisors for over 13 years. He is an active member of the Samaritan's Purse DART teams, having served with SP in Iraq, Bangladesh, Haiti, Ecuador and Ukraine, and also in Kenya with the SP World Medical Mission branch. Prior to El Paso, Dr. Parsa and his family served as long term missionaries with Pioneers (pioneers.org) at Rumginae Hospital in Papua New Guinea. A California native, he completed his emergency medicine residency in El Paso, his MD at Creighton and his BA at UCSD.

We all want our healthcare organizations (practices, clinics, hospitals, etc.) to function at a high level. We all have at least a theoretical appreciation for what a healthy culture could look like. And, as believers we want to integrate our faith in consistent and meaningful ways. Yet, if we’re honest, most of us feel like we are mostly failing, most of the time.

Whether we are a physician, a nurse, a support team member, or an administrator, there are things we can do, ways we can think, words we can use, actions we can take, and behaviors we can model that will help move us in the directions that we want to go.

We’ll discuss some of the following:- What are our real desires and goals?- Why there’s no such thing as a “Christian Clinic”.- How do we build and keep a good team?- How can delegation help us focus on what’s most important?- What is culture, and how is culture set?- How can we integrate faith in natural ways?- How can we involve our team members in the solutions?- What can we learn from our brothers and sisters doing this around the world?Description text goes here

Jonathan Hallsted holds a blended combination of experience in pastoral work (5 years), missionary service (7 years), and private medical practice management (13 years). His wife Rebecca and he founded and now lead an organization called Healthbridge Global. Their mission is to connect the beauty of healthcare to the hope of the gospel. They partner with doctors around the world on medical projects that are intentionally gospel-centric and financially viable. He is currently working in Eastern Europe, North Africa, India, and the United States.

While on earth, 75% of Jesus’ recorded miracles were healthcare interventions. Healthcare is still one of the most strategic tools at our disposal to build bridges to closed nations, closed cultures, and closed hearts.

In Jonathan’s healthcare management experience, he developed a passion for, and a calling to, operational excellence combined with a high-touch, relationship-oriented management style. Admittedly, he learned this perspective via a series of mistakes, a misguided pursuit of perfection, and a revelatory understanding that he was called to “pastor” his team.

He resides in Northern California, just outside of Sacramento, and has four fantastic children - one of whom is a student here at CBU.

Email Jonathan

(530) 264-6067

Hear perspectives and ask questions of a panel of healthcare professionals as you seek to discern where to pursue your healthcare education.

Doug Lindberg, MD

Virginia H. Cadenhead, PhD, RN, CNM,

Robin Schoen, DO

Others …

Chrisitan maturity and fruitfulness cannot happen without the refining presence of hardship, suffering, and divine discipline. Any disciple who longs to advance Jesus' Kingdom must prepare for periods of suffering as a prerequisite for meaningful ministry. It's not fun, but the end result is a "harvest of righteousness" (Hebrews 12:11).

Rick Donlon grew up in New Orleans and graduated from Texas Christian University in 1986. He completed medical school at LSU-N.O., and a combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency at the University of Tennessee, Memphis. In 1995 he and three medical school classmates opened a primary-care health center in Memphis’ most medically underserved neighborhood. The work eventually grew to include eight health centers, three dental clinics, and a family medicine residency program—providing over 170,000 patient visits annually.

Beginning in 2003, many of the medical and dental providers, including Dr. Donlon, moved into the underserved communities where they work. In those same low-income settings, they’ve planted over a dozen house churches. That house church network has subsequently sent dozens of long-term medical missionaries to North Africa, Central and South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa.

In September of 2020, Dr. Donlon became the Memphis Area Director for the Christian Medical and Dental Associations (while continuing to practice medicine half time).

Physicians, dentists, and other healthcare workers who’ve trained with Dr. Donlon in Memphis have started or joined similar ministries in low-income communities across the US. Dr. Donlon, his wife Laurie, and their seven children live in the Binghampton neighborhood where he serves as an elder in the house church network.

Email Rick

The history of addiction and racism in America are often told separately. This presentation will review the intertwined relationship between substance use and racial bias during the 20th and 21st century. We will review the latest literature on how the opioid crisis affects all races and ethnicities as well as the concerning trends in synthetic opioid overdoses. We will also look to next steps and strategies for overcoming and healing both addiction and racial bias in America. The talk will particularly provide a Biblical lens for how to discuss addiction and racial disparities with secular colleagues from a Kingdom worldview.

Dr. Yamashita is a double-board certified Family Medicine and Addiction Medicine physician currently serving as interim Medical Director of Hurtt Family Health Clinic in Santa Ana, California. He completed his Addiction Medicine Fellowship at Stanford where he serves as adjunct faculty teaching their Stigma and Disparities curricula. Dr. Yamashita founded and currently Chairs the Christian Medical and Dental Association’s Addiction Medicine Section, which is an multi-professional and interdisciplinary network of healthcare professionals and faith-based leaders working together to free their communities from addiction. He served on CMDA’s Racism, Reconciliation, Equality, and Diversity Committee. He is passionate about caring for the whole person and exposing myths and stigmas that contribute to addiction, overdoses, and poor health in our communities.

This session will provide an introduction to health care providers who may encounter victims trapped in sex or human slavery. We will help providers to recognize human trafficking victims in the health care setting. The goal is to train providers to intervene, access help, and empower potential victims trapped in human slavery.

Participants will gain understanding of mandated reporting and role in collaborating with law enforcement.

We will also introduce a wholistic model for healing those who experienced trauma.

Guest Detective Kim Hernandez of the San Bernadino Police Department will be joining our breakout leader, Cathy Chang-Letherer.

Cathy Letherer has been in clinical practice for 27 years with 3 of those years overseas as a certified Physician Assistant (PA-C). She teaches as associate professor and academic director at CBU's PA Program. Her goal is to live my highest calling as a mother, wife, in clinical practice with the geriatric population, and at CBU teaching and mentoring future healthcare professionals to care wholistically for their patients.

Email Cathy

951-552-8298

Marriage is hard. Medical marriages are even harder. There’s the time suck, the mental drain, the emotional depletion, and the isolation. So how do you dedicate yourself to a life of serving Christ through medicine and still have a marriage that thrives? In this session, we will normalize the struggle of medical marriages; encourage those in medical marriages to stay the course; equip medical marriages to grow their intimacy, endurance, affection, communication, and hopefulness; and highlight the strange gift that marriage is for our individual journey with Jesus.

During his fourth year of medical school, he volunteered for two months at Tenwek Hospital in Kenya where he met CEO Dr. Ernie Steury and Medical Director Dr. David Stevens. During his third year of surgical residency, God brought Mike’s high school sweetheart Pam back into his life, and they married in August 1991. A few months later, they traveled to Kenya and Tenwek Hospital in 1992 for two months where both enjoyed getting to know the Tenwek community while Mike was immersed in surgical care in a busy surgery referral center in rural Africa.

Mike completed a general surgery residency at Methodist Hospital in 1993 and then joined Southwestern Medical Clinic, a group in Southwest Michigan dedicated to global healthcare missions. Former CMDA and ICMDA president Dr. Bob Schindler and his wife Marian mentored Mike and Pam until their departure for Tenwek in 1996. Mike was board certified in general surgery in 1995 while working with Southwestern.

Mike was drawn to the orthopedic surgery service as Tenwek had no long-term bone surgeon. He was also named Medical Director in mid-1997. Tenwek grew remarkably during Mike’s tenure as surgeon and medical director to a clinical staff of over 80 physicians and clinical officers and more than 700 total staff. Training programs for interns, family medicine, general surgery and orthopedics were also developed and launched during those years.

Mike and Pam left for Kenya in August 1996 with two small children and added two more while at Tenwek Hospital: Steven, Melody, Kayla and Ashley.

In 2015, Dr. David Stevens invited Mike to consider returning to the U.S. to assume the role of CMDA Executive Vice President. After seven months of prayer and seeking counsel from mission leaders, mentors and close friends, Pam and Mike decided to leave their Kenya home and mission life of 20 years and moved to Bristol, Tennessee in July 2016. Mike has counted it an amazing privilege to serve alongside David Stevens and Gene Rudd and all the national CMDA staff for nearly four years. In September 2018, after an eight-month CEO search process, the Board of Trustees asked Mike to become the next CEO of CMDA and he began September 1, 2019, when Dr. Stevens stepped down. Mike’s life verses are from 2 Timothy 1:6-7: “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you…for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (ESV). To God be the glory, great things He has done!

Email Mike

Who are the unreached? Why are they unreached and how can they experience Love in Action? How do students and healthcare professionals keep their passion for service to the unreached alive while in training? In this workshop we will answer these questions and more, and will illustrate with stories and examples from real-life experiences. 

Laurel is in her last year of a Complex General Surgical Oncology fellowship. As she has journeyed through medical training, she has actively looked for ways to learn from and to serve God’s children around the world. Travel to multiple regions of the globe has strengthened her passion for reaching the unreached with hope. Her desire is to be among those who “follow the Lamb wherever He goes.” Revelation 14:4