For more than three decades, Drs. Marcia and Oscar Sablan have served the tiny Central Valley town of Firebaugh. In an affectionate portrait today, the Los Angeles Times describes a couple who made a plan to work for three years in a rural area and walk away from all their medical school debt. As Marcia Sablan mentioned last week in a panel discussion in Fresno, she and her husband moved from Hawaii and arrived in Firebaugh in July on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year.
The couple never left Firebaugh, and today they are fixtures in the community. But what I found particularly interesting was the couple’s recognition that medicine only goes so far, as reporter Anna Gorman describes in the Times article:
… (A)s they built up their medical practice, the Sablans say, they realized that they could do only so much in the exam room. For example, they would tell their diabetic patients to exercise, but there were few places to do so. So they turned to politics. “I just saw that was the only way change could be made,” says Marcia Sablan, who is still on the city council. Continue reading
