New PSU College of Medicine dean shares goals

The new dean of Penn State College of Medicine has a passion for improving health care in rural communities and improving the health of Asian Americans and other minority populations.

Dr. Karen Kim, who took the helm of the school Sept. 1, is a dynamo that has hit the ground running to expand opportunities for medical students, business leaders, government entities and communities to come together to promote wellness in underserved communities.

Kim is a recognized leader in research on Asian Americans and serves as the principal investigator of the Partnership for Healthier Asians, an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRAQ)-supported program to improve cancer screening among Asian immigrants.

She is also the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Rural Health Research and plans to broaden that research in rural Pennsylvania communities to improve health care.

In her new role, Kim will lead the College of Medicine’s education, research and clinical missions, culture of innovation, and will focus on enhancing team-based interdisciplinary collaboration across the College of Medicine, Penn State Health, the university at large.

Kim said that through her research, she is looking to bring science and clinical applications together to allow medical students to work with scientists and patients to create better health care outcomes.

“I’m always looking for an opportunity to have a meaningful impact,” she said. “When I was contacted (by Penn State College of Medicine), I knew little about it.”

It was the passion she saw from faculty, students and the community that attracted her, she said.

Kim, who is the first woman and first Asian American dean at Penn State College of Medicine, said her vision is to improve translational research and rural medicine.

Translational research takes scientific discoveries made in the laboratory, in clinics or out in the field and transforms them into new treatments that improve the health of the population.

Kim comes to Penn State College of Medicine from the University of Chicago where she served as vice provost for research and senior research officer. She said Illinois is 65% rural while Pennsylvania is 75% rural and has the third largest rural population in the country.

That was a draw for Kim who said she is passionate about bringing health equity to those populations.

“I led the colorectal cancer control program across the state of Illinois. My team worked closely with the public health infrastructure, established sustainable models for care delivery and significantly increased colorectal cancer screening rates through innovative, community informed approaches to care coordination and access to care,” Kim said. “Using this as a successful rural model, I am very interested in bringing this commitment to improve rural health to central Pennsylvania.”

Kim said that it’s not just about humanity, it’s about how to deliver patient-centered care.

“We need to develop interdisciplinary teams and systems which will be valuable for our learners,” she added.

Kim pointed out that 70% of health is based on social determinants of health.

“Green spaces, jobs, transportation, childcare and other determinants influence our ability to stay healthy,” she said. “Pennsylvania’s resources are focused on the large metropolitan areas (Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), and the T-shaped middle part of the state is under resourced.”

Kim said the question is how to build a pipeline of students into rural health.

“Less than 5% of graduating surgeons go into rural health. We graduate 1,800 students each year,” she said.

Kim said one of her main focuses will be on improving early exposure to build pipelines into rural health.

“Do we have the curriculum to understand the challenge of rural areas,” she asked. “We need to look at high school and college students from rural areas and get them to medical school. We will do that by using best practices to help students succeed.”

Kim was drawn to Hershey by the “warmth and passion” of the people she encountered.

“Now I roll up my sleeves to find the resources for our faculty and students and promote the strategies that work,” she said.

“We are not located near Penn State, so we need to leverage the strength of our resources with them,” she said. “We need to figure out how to work to enhance scientific success.”

Kim said an engaged college is one that creates synergistic relationships with nonprofits, public health and business leaders to make a difference. And she is setting out to do just that.

“Students need to understand what return collaborations have. The faculty too,” she said. “We need to be engaged beyond our walls. This college has the opportunity to spread its wings through ideology and research to impact the broader community.”

Kim got interested in Asian American and minority health 25 years ago after her mother died of complications related to Hepatitis B, which affects 1 in 12 Asian Americans.

“Despite completing medical school, residency and GI fellowship, I was shocked that I had never been taught about these huge disparities in health impacting these communities. So, I started a nonprofit to focus on medical education, community engagement, training and policy/advocacy,” she said. “Over time, this resulted in building tremendous capacity to address health disparities among all marginalized communities including rural communities.”

As founder and director of the Center for Asian Health Equity-a community-academic partnership, Kim is a national leader on public policies for the inclusion of Asian-Americans and underserved populations in research.

“I look at barriers to care which are more challenging in rural areas. Urban areas have resources rural areas typically don’t,” she said.

Kim said mentoring and pipeline programs can help bring students from rural areas to the college, which will create a co-learning opportunity for current students.

“We also need our students to go into rural communities so they can see the needs,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I’m here. This was successful at the University of Chicago and no one (in Pennsylvania) lives more than 30 minutes from one of the Penn State campuses.”

Saying she can’t accomplish this by herself, Kim said, “We need business leaders, government officials and educators to all work together to succeed.”

As for being the first woman to lead Penn State College of Medicine and the first Asian American dean, Kime said she is dean first, Asian American second.

“Asian Americans are underrepresented,” she said, citing less than two percent of college deans are Asian American.

“My goal is to serve as a mentor and a trailblazer for women. I don’t see myself as a woman dean but a dean that is a woman,” Kim said. “I don’t see myself breaking any barriers; I think of myself as a capable leader.”