Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sergio Huerta. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Sergio thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

Most physicians are commonly motivated to go into medicine with a genuine desire to help others. Surgeons are driven into a specialty by the appeal to observe tangible results from interventions. Global Health in surgical care is at the heart of these innate feelings in helping others in the greatest need of medical care. It is difficult to pinpoint a defining moment to get to where we are today with our registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization: Aid Via Action Inc (AVA), which aims to promote surgical health equality in Northern Guatemala. Our experience has been a trajectory and a number of pivotal moments in the delivery of health care abroad have shaped the defining goal of the organization.
My first experience with health care delivery, outside of the United States, was in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in 2012. The most impactful story from this trip was in a clinic with one of the surgical oncologists in the major county hospitals in Tegucigalpa. A 64-year-old man had been brought by his son with computer tomography films that showed a pancreatic mass of unknown etiology. The father was asked to step out of the room and the surgical oncologist communicated to the son that there was nothing that could be done for his father. Even pursuing more diagnostic tests would entail costs that the family would not be able to afford. He was told to take his father home to the village and try to enjoy the rest of his life in the best possible way. To this day, I wonder how he progressed with the disease. Was he in pain? Did his death occur with dignity? I will never know. Honduras is the second poorest country in the Westen hemisphere, I would have to wait eight years in my global health experience to visit the poorest one: Haiti. The differences between Honduran and Hait were vast. In Hati, there was not even an infrastructure to deliver care. People are educated and willing to work, but the lack of opportunities is extremely deep in the system. This combined with pollical instability and corruption, makes it impossible even for charity organizations deliver adequate care. I remember that as a surgeon, I had to deliver primary care to individuals that were coming to the clinic just to get their stories heard, let alone help with food, let alone help with health care.
Since 2012, I have participated in multiple global health activities which have taken me to Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Lebanon, Indonesia, and India. I remember that in a trip to India, the surgeon had to step out of the operating room to discuss with the family whether the family was willing to pay for a piece of mesh to properly repair a ventral hernia. These experiences have shaped the goals that I have today with a non-profit organization.
I have learned from Nichola Kristoff that while we cannot help everyone, that doesn’t mean that we should not help anyone. I learned that I had to be educated about global health to be able to do it well. I learned from my participation with other non-profit organizations regarding what they did well and what they did not. A great deal of my time was spent reading the literature regarding global health and the book The Most Good You Can Do by Peter Singer. With this armamentarium and an excellent board of directors, AVA was founded in April of 2021. Our goal is to deliver the best quality surgical care to people in Northern Guatemala. Our basic principles are to strengthen the infrastructure and current resources of Northern Guatemala, develop bidirectional education activities, establish good follow up care to the interventions delivered, and to minimize or mitigate global health tourism.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Aid Via Action Inc (AVA) is a 501(c)3 organization founded in April 2021. A brief history of this trajectory has been publish at the AVA website. AVA’s goal is mitigating disparities in health care imposed by geographic location. The core mission is to assist with high-income-countries’ level of care at Hospital Nacional de San Benito in El Peten Guatemala. The non-profit organization is guided by the principles of Nicholas Kristoff who has indicated that “just because we cannot help everyone does not mean we should not help anyone”. AVA is loyal to the example Paul Farmer of who delivered consistent and compassionate care to the people of Haiti and AVA is hoping to follow the philosophy Peter Singer as outlined in his monumental book The Most Good You Can Do.

AVA is interested in recruiting medical students with a genuine longitudinal interest in GH, which will be followed throughout their careers. AVA is hoping to minimize or mitigate global health tourism. In conjunction with the authorities of El Peten, Guatemala and Hospital Nacional de San Benito, AVA has created a Surgical Resident Rotation at the site. There have been several residents participating in this rotation and AVA is hoping to recruit more. AVA orchestrates three mission trips a year and have recently began an aggressive UROLOGY PROGRAM at the site. Next year, we hope to begin a vascular program as well.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

It is impossible to think about the trajectory of my life and not think about giving back. I was born in Mexico City in one of the poorest suburbs of the city where crime and violence were the rule. I am the second oldest of six siblings and, fortunately, I recognized the need to extract myself from that environment. I left Mexico City at age 19 to the US in Los Angeles with an lived with aunt who had been living there for many years. I had no money and spoke zero English. I used to clean toilets to make a living and anything that paid money. I went to English as a second language at night and worked over 80 hours a week. I eventually learn sufficient English to enroll in a community college: West Los Angeles College. I graduated from this community college in June of 1990 and had a good GPA to gain acceptance at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I graduated from UCLA with a degree in biology in June of 1992. I had to work in the evenings and then go to school in the morning to make it work. I then applied to medical school at UCLA and gained acceptance in 1994. During this time, I met the love of my life . We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in Mexico City this past June. I then completed my residency in General Surgery at the University of California, Irvine in 2005 and came to work for our Veteran population at the VA in Dallas, where I have been a staff surgeon for nearly 20 years. During this tenure, I have been the chief of surgery at the VA, the Clerkship Director of Student Education at UT Southwestern, delivered many national and international talks, received six medical student teaching awards, and I have recently been appointed the Chief of the Ethics Committee at the VA. When you look at this trajectory of incredible fortune in my life, it is impossible to not to think about giving something back. Being involved with the non-profit organization has been the most rewarding activity of my academic career.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

This is not from me, but from many people who have been successful who will tell you that failure is the key to success. In my life from learning English to Becoming a surgeon and being appointed to professor at the University of Texas Southwestern has encountered by many bumps along the way. However, I have applied the same principles to develop and grow our non-profit organization Aid Via Action Inc. in the same way. Dedication, persistence and hard work.

One of the first obstacles had to do with the goodwill of people. When I told everyone about the organization, the stared inundating my house is all kinds of supplies, equipment, and many articles that I could take to Guatemala. I soon found out that shipping all these items to Guatemala was prohibitive. Further, I found that most of the items that I received were not useful for the hospital or the mission trips. Thus, I started being selective in what we collected. We also started taking supplies a few at the time with each trip to Guatemala. I often ask all participants to help me with some supplies whenever we make trips.

The second and most important aspect of each mission trip was communication. We started bringing people to the site who were poorly prepared to see what they were going to help with. Also, some people at the hospital knew that we were coming, but some did not. Thus, we developed rigorous orientation activities for all just before the trip.

Importantly, I learned early that we needed to review all the charts of the patients prior to the operation. Thus, we also scheduled Zoom meetings with the director of the hospital and the surgeons at the hospital each time to go over all the cases that would be covered during the mission trip. Further, we have developed a strategy to follow up these patients once the short mission trip ends. Thus, we always have a US surgeon operating with a local surgeon.

However, I believe that one of the most challenging aspects of the organization has been to raise money for our cause. I am a physician and know very little about financial issues. I learned that I had a great number of good friends who were willing to help financially to get the project off the ground, but there is something called donation fatigue, and I learned that quickly. This has continued to be a struggle, but we have recently hired a director of development who will help us with this endeavor.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aidviaaction.org/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/aidviaaction?utm_medium=copy_link
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087797231731

Image Credits

N/A