Dr. Thomas Samuel “Sam” Shomaker started his new role on July 1 as the sixth dean of the University of Hawaiʻi John A. Burns School of Medicine.
He was initially nominated by UH Mānoa Provost Michael Bruno and then chosen out of three finalists earlier this year. He succeeds Dr. Jerris Hedges, who stepped down in March 2023; Dr. Lee Buenconsejo-Lum was the interim dean and one of the three finalists.
Shomaker, a 1986 JABSOM graduate, has 20 years of experience in the health care field. JABSOM said he also has a law degree from Georgetown University, a master's in management from Stanford University and a bachelor's from St. Louis University.
He served as the interim dean of JABSOM from 2005 to 2006 and as vice dean from 2000 to 2005 under the late Dr. Edwin Cadman.
Shomaker returns to Hawaiʻi after more recently serving as dean of the Austin campus for the University of Texas Medical Branch and the dean and vice president at the Texas A&M Health Science Center.
Shomaker spoke to The Conversation about his long- and short-term priorities for the state's only medical school.
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Interview Highlights
On his two strategic goals for the school
SAM SHOMAKER: I have two kind of overarching strategic goals. One is to make JABSOM the best medical school in the Asia-Pacific region. And my second goal is to make it the best Indigenous-serving medical school in the world. I think we have a special kuleana to take care of our Native Hawaiian population. They face very significant health disparities, along with the Filipino and Pacific Islander population. So we're going to spend a lot of time trying to address those health disparities and improve the health care status of those disadvantaged populations.
On how he plans to serve disadvantaged communities
SHOMAKER: Well, our approach, historically and going forward, has been to work with community organizations that are well-connected and are already serving those populations. So we have tried hard to build bridges with those community organizations. And we go to those organizations and we ask them what they need. We don't go and tell them what we're going to do for them. I think it's very important to listen to their needs and then to try to respond with programmatic offerings that speak to those needs.
On the state's physician shortage
SHOMAKER: We face a very severe physician shortage in the state. We're about 800 physicians shy of what we need, so that's a huge gap that we have to try to fill. We have a relatively small medical school. We have 72 students in our entering class, or I think 77 rather, the rate-limiting step for us is clinical placement sites because the first two years of the curriculum are largely in the classroom. Then we send the students out to hospitals and health systems, who are key educational partners, but it's very easy to saturate the clinical placement sites that we have. What we're doing now to address that issue is we're really trying to beef up the educational infrastructure on the neighbor islands, which really fits well with the needs of the state because the health care community on the neighbor islands needs all the support they can get. I practiced medicine in Kona, for example, so I know firsthand what it's like to practice in a neighbor island setting.
On the challenges neighbor island physicians face
SHOMAKER: I was the only anesthesiologist in all of Kona, so a very large population area. I was on call every night. My wife, who's a wonderful pediatric orthopedic surgeon, was pregnant with our second child. I had to put in her epidural. When my son developed meconium aspiration as he was being born, I had to resuscitate him. So that's kind of an example of the challenges that neighbor island physicians face on a daily basis. So we need to do everything we can, not only to support the physicians that are in practice now, but to train additional physicians who are committed to going back and serving in neighbor island communities. So we already have a very, very important medical training track on Kauaʻi, which we were able to start with the generosity of the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation. So we're well and truly engaged on Kauaʻi. We want to do similar things on both Maui and the Big Island.
On creating more research and business opportunities
SHOMAKER: The other main priority that I have is building our research capability because I believe that if we are able to do that, we will eventually contribute to diversifying the economy of the state, because a lot of the research that we do does have commercial applications, and I think it's important for us to train a new generation, both of physicians and graduate students, with a sense of entrepreneurship, so that they can start companies and create some good paying jobs, so we don't lose our best and brightest to the mainland, which happens all too often. I mean, I know several very outstanding young people on the mainland who would love to come back home, but there's just, there are just no jobs for them here, and we've got to, we've got to fix that. Tourism is great, don't get me wrong, but we need an alternative to tourism. And I think that's why the University of Hawaiʻi writ large is so critically important to the state because we train the workforce for the state.
On his priority list
SHOMAKER: This is going to be kind of mundane for your listeners, but medical schools have to be accredited in order to award degrees, so we have a very important accreditation site visit coming up in January of 2025, and you would not believe the hundreds and hundreds of people hours that it takes to prepare for one of these accreditations. I mean, the documentation that we have to provide is just, it's pretty onerous, actually, but we have to get that right because without accreditation, we can't operate. So we're really focusing a lot of effort on that, and I put some of my more ambitious long-term plans on hold until we get that accreditation behind us.
This interview aired on The Conversation on July 11, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
