Honoring physicians who are doing community
service locally or outside the state or nation.
Susan B. Girois, MD, MPH
Medical Director, JenCare Neighborhood Medical Centers
Susan Girois (née Brown) was born in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), the daughter of medical missionaries who devoted their entire careers to serving some of the poorest people on earth, both in Africa and in Haiti. It was from them – from her physician father and anthropologist mother – that she learned the values that have guided her own life of service, both as a medical professional and as a passionate advocate for access to healthcare where there is none.
When she was very young, she began helping her father manage vaccination programs for children in outlying villages. During high school summer breaks, she’d care for severely malnourished kids: “I’d help scrub their scabies, do nutritional assessments, help with teaching,” she says, “anything to relieve suffering.”
Not the stuff of typical teenage girl dreams, but her childhood was anything but typical: “I remember my mother’s involvement in the early 80s with the AIDS epidemic in Africa,” Dr. Girois says. “My sister and I were in middle school, and Mom would ask us to brainstorm with her about how to talk to African teenagers about HIV prevention. My parents’ choice was a life and a profession of serving the underserved. Through this I learned to appreciate the inherent value in every human being. I also learned to question and challenge the status quo.”
After finishing high school in Kinshasa, she came to America to attend the College of William and Mary and medical school (VCU, then Penn State). She returned to Africa during her summers, often taking on ambitious projects, one of which was a survey of Zairean women on their risk of HIV, including focus groups for women who had been forced to sell their bodies to subsist.
After completing her internship and residency in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, she returned to Africa, to Botswana, where she served as advisor to the national anti-retroviral team for the development and implementation of a national strategy to treat HIV.
In 2002, she accepted a position with a French humanitarian organization – Handicap International – helping people with disabilities in developing countries. In Southeast Asia, she worked with the blind and deaf, as well as those who had suffered the sequelae of landmines from the war, always focusing on trying to improve access to basic healthcare for these individuals. “I had worked for so long with HIV and AIDS patients,” she says, “but I realized it’s the same for people with disabilities and mental illness. These are men and women who are stigmatized, people blocked by the system, people with incredible need. It’s to these people that I gravitate.”
Three years ago, Dr. Girois returned to the US with her husband and two sons, now 9 and 11. She worked with the Norfolk Community Services Board before becoming Medical Director of JenCare Neighborhood Medical Centers in Tidewater, an organization that provides primary care for another vulnerable population: low to middle income seniors on Medicare.
She sees many pockets of need in Hampton Roads, and is eager not just to serve them herself, but to influence other heath care providers to become involved as well. “There are organizations doctors can support with their skills and their time,” she says. “There’s Homeless Connect, where physicians can provide medical services to the homeless, specialists can offer pro bono services through Access Partnership, volunteer at the Western Tidewater Free Clinic or the EVMS HOPES Clinic.”
With a degree in public health, Dr. Girois has a passion for working at a systems level to change health outcomes for vulnerable and high-risk groups. “This is what attracted me to JenCare, a primary care leader in today’s transitioning health care environment. What’s the reward? My entire career I’ve found resilience and dignity among the people I serve. That’s invigorating! That’s the reward I’d like my fellow physicians to know.”
