Jenny Fayette is the immediate past president of the Alaska Academy of Physician Assistants. She is a graduate of the only physician assistant training program in Alaska, the MEDEX program which is a partnership with the University of Washington and the University of Alaska Anchorage. Prior to going to PA school, Jenny was an exercise physiologist, a high school science teacher, and a professional cross-country skier. After a decade working in orthopedic surgery, she recently took a job as PA in breast surgery.

We will be discussing a bill from the most recent legislative session that would have modernized the treatment of PAs in Alaska statute. Senate Bill 115 was sponsored by Senator Löki Tobin who represents downtown Anchorage; her bill never made it to the floor of the Alaska State House for a vote, and therefore it died at the end of the 33rd legislature. A new version of that bill will likely be introduced in the 34th Legislature.

Lisa Aquino is the CEO of the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center (ANHC). Before taking over that organization in 2021, she was the Executive Director of Catholic Social Services for seven years. She has a Masters in Health Sciences degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center is a federally qualified health center that provides primary health care services to everyone in our community with a special focus on those who face extra barriers to care.

• Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center is accepting new patients for primary care services
• and has behavioral health services available to all its established patients.

To learn more or establish care visit ANHC.org or call 907-743-7200.

Dr. Bill Sage is the Assistant Vice President of the Texas A&M Health Science Center, a professor of Medicine at the Texas A& M University School of Medicine, and a professor of Law at Texas A& M University School of Law. He has published hundreds of papers over the decades on health law and policy, and he has edited four books including the Oxford Handbook of US Health Law. He has previously been a professor of law and/or medicine at the University of Texas Austin, Columbia Law School, Yale, Harvard and NYU. Although we will be talking about American health care policy rather than specifically Alaska health care policy, our conversation is relevant since the Alaska Health Care system is a microcosm of our national health care system.

Here are links to many of the Dr. Sage's papers discussed during today's episode:

"What the Pandemic Taught Us: The Health Care System We Have Is Not the System We Hoped We Had"

"Minding Ps and Qs: The Political and Policy Questions Framing Health Care Spending"

"Brand New Law! The Need to Market Health Care Reform"

Retired Alaska Superior Court Judge Elaine Andrews moved to Alaska in 1976 immediately upon graduating from law school. Her first job as a lawyer was with the Alaska Judicial Council, which is tasked with vetting new judges and with deciding whether or not to recommend sitting judges for retention. In Alaska, a judge must be at least 30 years old, and Elaine Andrews applied and was appointed to the bench shortly after she turned 30. She served as a full-time district court judge for 22 years and continued as a pro tempore judge part-time for another two decades after that.

Kendra Sticka, PhD, RDN, is the Executive Director of healthEconnect Alaska, the state-designated health information exchange (HIE). In this role, she spearheads the HIE's strategic growth and operations, including its continued expansion into underserved rural and urban communities. Dr. Sticka has worked in Alaska healthcare for more than 20 years, beginning as a clinical dietitian in hospital, clinical, and private practice before transitioning into academics and education. Prior to joining healthEconnect in 2023, she served as the Associate Dean of Clinical Health Sciences at the Univeristy of Alaska Anchorage. Dr. Sticka hold master degrees in nutrition and adult education and a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology.

To access the healthEconnect website, click here.

Rev. Matt Schultz has been the Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in downtown Anchorage for eleven years. We discuss what Christian Nationalism is and why it’s dangerous. We also talk about Matt’s childhood, what brought him to the ministry, and how he came to be a liberal in both politics and theology.

Rev. Schultz is leading classes starting Tuesday, Sept. 24, at 6:30 pm entitled, "The Dangers of Christian Nationalism." Additional classes will be held, Tuesday, Oct. 1 at 6:30 pm, and possibly the Tuesday after that at First Presbyterian Church, 616 W. 10th Avenue, on the Delaney Park Strip.

Dr. Lawrence Weiss founded the Masters in Public Health program and was instrumental in starting the Alaska Native Studies program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He has a PhD in Sociology from SUNY Binghamton, but it was his postdoctoral Masters degree from Harvard in Occupational Health that moved him to Anchorage in the early 80s and led to a 35 year career in public health as a researcher, educator, writer, program evaluator and policy analyst.

For Dr. Weiss's article on Medicare-for-All, click here.

For Dr. Weiss's article on teacher retirements, click here.

For Forbes's ranking of cost of health care by state, click here.

For NPR story on cost of chemo in Juneau, click here.

Dr. Anne Zink served as the Chief Medical Officer for the state of Alaska in Governor Dunleavy’s administration from 2019 until the Spring of 2024. She is a practicing emergency room physician who served as the emergency department medical director of the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center from 2010 to 2018. She received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed her emergency medicine residency at the the University of Utah.

Watch the full clip of Dr. Zink's grandfather, Albert Bartlett, here.