Two Physicians Celebrated for Volunteerism – Cyber Tech

HONOLULU — Kaiser Permanente lately honored Melanie Shim, MD, and Felicitas Livaudais, MD, because the 2023 recipients of the nationwide David Lawrence Group Service Award. The annual award honors Kaiser Permanente workers in every of the group’s eight areas for excellent volunteer actions that enhance neighborhood well being and wellness. To rejoice the accomplishments of Dr. Shim and Dr. Livaudais, Kaiser Permanente will donate a complete of $20,000 to the Maui Emergency Caregivers Respite Fund, Camp He Ola Ke Keiki for youngsters with diabetes, IMUA Household Providers and Buddies of the Kids’s Justice Middle.

Dr. Melanie Shim is a pediatric endocrinologist at Kaiser Permanente Mapunapuna Medical Workplace. With over 25 years of volunteer service, Dr. Shim is dedicated to creating the lives of youngsters with diabetes more healthy and happier. Dr. Shim partnered with the American Diabetes Affiliation in Hawaii to ascertain He Ola Ke Keiki, the state’s solely in-person summer time camp for youngsters and youths with kind 1 or kind 2 diabetes. Over a four-day, three-night keep on Oahu’s North Shore, individuals develop better self-confidence, learn to handle their diabetes, and make lifelong friendships. Along with serving because the camp’s medical director, Dr. Shim has constructed partnerships with native farms to advocate wholesome consuming and has established help and train teams for individuals affected by diabetes.

Whereas her in depth volunteer work additionally contains Particular Olympics and Woman Scouts of America initiatives, her ardour is with the American Diabetes Affiliation. Dr. Shim serves on ADA’s management board and leads initiatives like Mission Energy, which focuses on weight management for youngsters. Averaging 2 hundred volunteer hours yearly, she additionally speaks on the John A. Burns Faculty of Medication and conferences nationwide. Dr. Shim will cut up her $10,000 donation between the Hawaii Alzheimer’s Affiliation’s Maui Emergency Caregivers Respite Fund and the American Diabetes Affiliation’s He Ola Ke Keiki diabetes camp.

Dr. Felicitas Livaudais is a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente Kihei Clinic. She has devoted 300 hours yearly over the previous 17 years to varied causes within the Maui neighborhood. Dr. Livaudais serves on the board of the Buddies of the Kids’s Justice Middle, aiding youngsters in foster care and people struggling abuse, and has been instrumental in offering assets like donated cell telephones and glasses to youngsters in want. She has been a board member of IMUA Household Providers for 17 years, enhancing companies for youngsters with particular wants and supporting the addition of autism companies. As a latest board member of the Hawaii chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Maui, Dr. Livaudais has organized occasions to unite pediatric physicians and advocate for affected person care. 

She can also be a mentor on the John A. Burns Faculty of Medication, the place she takes pleasure in her mentees who’ve change into working towards physicians in Maui. Dr. Livaudais’ work with the Ho‘oikaika Partnership focuses on adversarial childhood experiences and educating social staff and the neighborhood. She can also be concerned with Mission Imaginative and prescient, aiding the homeless and people ceaselessly using shelters. Her efforts prolong to fundraising, notably for the Buddies of the Kids’s Justice Middle, to construct a house for younger adults getting old out of foster care. Dr. Livaudais will cut up her $10,000 donation between IMUA Household Providers and Buddies of the Kids’s Justice Middle.

The David Lawrence Group Service Award is known as for David Lawrence, MD, former chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente and a lifelong advocate for bettering well being.