Dear fellow JABSOM alumni,
I am sincerely honored to begin a term as the President of the JABSOM Alumni Association. Like you, I owe so much to this amazing medical school. JABSOM provided me the opportunity to fulfill my dream of becoming a physician. I learned from some inspiring faculty members, and my classmates have become some of my dearest, lifelong friends. If not for JABSOM, I realize that all of my professional opportunities would never have been possible. Without JABSOM, I am not sure where I would be today. I see this as one way for me to “give back” and “pay it forward” to a school that I love, and look forward to serving all of you in this capacity.
It is very important to me to begin by recognizing our outgoing President, Dr. William Haning, III. Bill deserves our sincere thanks for everything he has done for our organization in this role. I am very pleased that he will continue to stay involved with our Board of Directors as our Past President.
At our recent Board of Directors meeting, we discussed our hopes and aspirations for the coming year. We identified engaging all of you, and facilitating your re-connecting with our medical school, as our top priorities. Our hope is to ramp up our communication to help you stay abreast of what is happening at the school, create new opportunities and traditions for you to see classmates and network with other alumni, find ways recognize all of you for your tremendous accomplishments, and offer ways for us to support current and future generations of medical students. The goal is to bring all of us together in a way that we know is unique to Hawaii, and unique to JABSOM. Our hope is that this vision resonates with you too, as to achieve our goal we need to connect with every one of you individually. We’re hoping we can create a cascade effect…and that could start with you.
In this issue of our Alumni E-Newsletter, we will be recapping our recent Alumni CME Program and Reunion, highlighting one of our wonderful alums, and introducing our “Helping Our Students Travel” program. We hope you enjoy this “postcard from home”, and want future issues to include news about you! Please send us updates about your professional and personal lives that we can share with the larger JABSOM Alumni ohana. Don’t be shy – we’d love to hear from you! Please email us at jabsomaa@hawaii.edu
Aloha,
Richard
Richard Kasuya, MD, MSEd, FACP
JABSOM Class of 1989
kasuya@hawaii.edu