2010 Family Physician of the Year Brings Care to Medically Underserved at Home, Abroad

Colleagues of family physician Karl Watts, M.D., say his motto could be, "Think and act globally and locally." Watts himself says the foundation of his work as a family physician -- both in his hometown of Boise, Idaho, and around the world -- has been a driving desire to help the underserved.

"Significant experiences during medical school and after solidified my Christian faith. My local and international work is a way to bring that out in real ways," said Watts, who was honored Oct. 14 as the AAFP's 2010 Family Physician of the Year during the opening ceremony of the Academy's annual Scientific Assembly in Boston.

The award honors an outstanding American family physician who provides patients with compassionate and comprehensive care and serves as a community role model, professionally and personally, to other health professionals and to residents and medical students.

Watts is president and co-founder of Genesis World Mission, or GWM, a nonprofit, nondenominational Christian organization located in Garden City, Idaho, that has provided health care to medically underserved people in more than a dozen countries on five continents.

GWM also operates the Garden City Community Clinic, which provides free acute, chronic and preventive care to eligible low-income and uninsured people in a federally designated medically underserved area of Boise.

Since its founding in 2001, GWM has led or supplied more than 20 international medical trips, including visits to Mexico, Guatemala, India, Kenya, the Philippines and Indonesia-Papua New Guinea. Closer to home, the Garden City Community Clinic and its volunteer medical staff handle about 3,000 patient encounters a year.

Watts said his interest in family medicine, rural medicine and international medicine was sparked when, as a second-year medical student at the Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, he volunteered with the Christian Medical and Dental Association. The association sponsored a two-week humanitarian medical trip to Babahoya, Ecuador, a small town about a two hours' drive inland from the coast.

Watts was part of a medical team of family physicians, plastic surgeons and dentists who repaired patients' cleft lips while working in a rundown government facility. The experience was pivotal, he said.

"I had been contemplating this type of work even before going to Ecuador. My choice of family medicine is from the perspective of being able to do this type of work," Watts said in an interview with AAFP News Now, adding that he changed his specialty choice from surgery to family medicine and completed the program at the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho, Boise.

After several years of fellowship training, faculty work and private practice in Boise, Watts said he realized he yearned to return to international medicine. He decided the best way to achieve that goal would be to establish an organization that would meet the medical needs of the underserved in his community and internationally.

In 2001, GWM was incorporated with a three-pronged mission: establishing a free clinic for the underserved in Boise, doing international medical outreach and serving as a medical supply warehouse, Watts said.

A year later, GWM opened the Garden City Community Clinic, which initially operated out of a double-wide trailer with a volunteer team of part-time physicians, nurses and staff members. After six months, the clinic moved to a renovated warehouse, where it remains today.

"The vast majority of people we see are trying to be responsible citizens," said Watts, who provides hands-on care in the clinic every Thursday evening. "They work, but maybe their employer doesn't provide insurance or they find themselves in an unfortunate situation."

Watts said he is proud of the community clinic, explaining that it has up-to-date equipment and a pleasant atmosphere and offers high-quality, compassionate care. "Few people are proud of going to a free clinic," he said. "The more we can do to make them feel valued and comfortable and well taken care of will go a long way for their self-esteem."

To augment the patient care provided at the Garden City Community Clinic and two other safety net health clinics, Watts also helped establish the Volunteer Physicians Network, a group of more than 200 subspecialists to whom Watts and his physician colleagues make referrals. Two hospitals and several ancillary organizations also participate in the network, which has provided more than $2.1 million in services during the past three years.

The year after the Garden City Community Clinic opened, GWM partnered with an area church to sponsor the mission's first international outreach -- to central Guatemala. Interestingly, the medical team that assembled for that trip boasted a personnel roster similar to what one would expect to find in a patient-centered medical home, or PCMH: family physicians, nurse practitioners, physician's assistants, nurses and other health care workers.

Numerous short-term outreach trips to many countries later, GWM now is focusing on establishing permanent medical outreaches staffed by local physicians at these sites as part of its focus on sustainable, long-term health service projects, Watts said.

The first such clinic, the Pentecostal Evangelical Fellowship of Africa Mercy Medical Clinic, opened in Ndumberi, Kenya, in 2007 and is on course to achieve financial independence by 2012. Watts said he views that outreach as the model for additional self-supporting clinics in other underserved areas.

During the past two years, Watts has immersed himself in health care reform efforts in his state, serving as the sole physician on the Governor's Select Committee on Health Care. Through his participation in a Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative/National Academy for State Health Policy conference in Washington last year, Watts has become a strong and vocal supporter of the PCMH and efforts to implement its tenets.

To Watts, all his accomplishments are but a logical outgrowth of his beliefs. "It's because of my faith," he said. "I'm simply using my abilities the way I feel called to help and serve others."

As for being named the Academy's newest Family Physician of the Year, Watts said, "I hope it will bring attention to the important work that not just Genesis World Mission is doing, but that so many others are doing, as well, so that we can partner with other people and other organizations to extend the reach of our efforts."