We recently connected with Mairi Leining and have shared our conversation below.

Mairi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

I was a hospital medicine physician for 14 years before I had my “defining moment,” which I otherwise describe as my “midlife crisis.” During an overnight shift at the Park City Hospital in 2019, I admitted an undocumented immigrant in his 30’s. He had type 2 diabetes that had become so severe that he required an ICU hospitalization to become stabilized. After 3 days, his blood sugars were under control and he was ready to be discharged to home: however, he did not actually have a home. He was couch surfing between over-crowded apartments while eating processed foods from 7-Eleven and working two construction jobs to survive. He also had no ability to afford the insulin we had started and lacked transportation to even get to a pharmacy. At that moment, I realized that I was on the wrong side of medicine – I wanted to prevent our uninsured community members from ending up in the ICU. I also realized that from my position of privilege, I was unaware of the depth of poverty in Park City. I quit my hospitalist job and became a full-time volunteer internal medicine physician at the People’s Health Clinic, which is a free, nonprofit clinic that provides medical care to the uninsured community members of Summit and Wasatch Counties, Utah.

With humility, I have learned about Park City through the stories of our patients. We have community
members who have sought asylum in our town from all over the world including Venezuela, the
Northern Triangle, and Ukraine. They have survived terrifying journeys across multiple borders to
escape extreme violence. The stories we hear are filled with terror, courage, and injustice. They are stories of survival, which are not known to many in this town. If only residents understood that their housecleaner, Maria, had been trafficked to a marijuana farm in California, where she became pregnant by rape; or that the dishwasher at a popular restaurant is Francisco, who crossed the Rio Grande in fear of his life with insulin packed in ice taped to his chest; or that Miguel, the condominium maintenance worker, died from COVID after being unable to afford quarantine.
MY patients suffer from housing insecurity, food insecurity, illiteracy, unemployment, and discrimination. These social determinants of health incite chronic disease and shorten life expectancy. BUT, poverty does not have to be a lifelong condition. Imagine if we all carried awareness of the poverty underlying Park City’s postcard tourism. Imagine if we all acted, together, to resolve this inequality in our towns.

Mairi, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

(Kind of answered in the previous question). Here is my professional background:

Mairi Leining, MD, MPH, FACP, is the Chief Executive Officer at People’s Health Clinic in Park City, where she provides health care to the underserved. She received her MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of internal medicine at the University of Utah. Prior to joining People’s Health Clinic, Mairi worked as a hospitalist and served as the ICU Medical Director at the Park City Hospital. She has also worked as a hospitalist in South Lake Tahoe and at the University of California San Francisco. Mairi graduated magna cum laude from Rice University with a BA in anthropology. She received her medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine and completed her residency training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

At the People’s Health Clinic, we care for patients who have had incredibly challenging lives. The work we do is fulfilling but it is also difficult to maintain a high morale when we are trying to help our patients overcome so many socioeconomic obstacles. We have a work culture in which we support each other through difficult days. In managing the team, I think it is important that my staff members know my deep commitment to the mission of the Clinic, which is to provide high-quality healthcare to our uninsured community members regardless of financial or legal status. This brings an authenticity and solidarity to the work that we do together.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

To be completely honest, I applied to medical school because I wanted to know that I would be able to take care of myself with a career in medicine. Having grown up in a dysfunctional household, I was terrified to be financially dependent on anyone. At age 21, I don’t think that I fully understood what a career in medicine actually entailed. Fortunately, I fell in love with medicine and providing free medical care is my passion. I would chose this path all over again, but I would do a little more research, first!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://peopleshealthclinic.org/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mairi-leining-md-mph-facp-7406351ba/