Hunched over a laptop computer aboard the UM Pediatric Mobile Clinic, Medical Director Adrian Khaw, M.D., tends to fundraising duties before his youthful patients start materializing.
"I've been up ‘til 4 in the morning for two nights in a row, working on this grant," says Khaw, a wiry, intense young man. Outside, low-hanging gray clouds spit intermittent rain onto a dirt lot beside San Juan Bosco Catholic Church, a west Miami landmark that Khaw's 37-foot clinic on wheels is visiting for the day.
If there's a constant in Khaw's life, it's that financial backing for his mobile medical facility is a dicey proposition. Another is that there never seem to be enough hours in a day to make a major impact on his target population of underserved and uninsured kids.
Not that any of this has cooled Khaw's ardor for what he does.
"I relate really well to kids. I want to do preventive health and I feel a real affinity for this kind of work," the assistant professor of clinical pediatrics says. "This is a vocation, rather than a job for me. It's more of a calling."
That last observation is evocative of Khaw's father, a United Methodist Church pastor in Baxley, Georgia. Nor did the apple fall far from Khaw's mother, who's a retired medical technologist.
The Khaws' 33-year-old son has been in charge of the mobile clinic since 2008. A van with three examining rooms, and narrow passageways with room for one person at a time, the clinic treated 2,567 patients in 2009, while logging 5,976 hours of training for students, residents, interns and fellows.
"We spend a fair amount of time with each patient," Khaw says as the clinic welcomes its first patient, a 21-month-old girl needing a vaccination. "We're not only doing physicals and vaccines. We're doing lab work, we're doing vision and hearing, we're doing mental health counseling, we're doing social work and psychology.
"And this is all completely free of charge," adds Khaw. "These patients are from disadvantaged backgrounds. They trust us, and they don't have access to health care any other way. They can't even afford the co-payment to go to a community health center."
Khaw sees patients ranging from newborns to 21-year-olds every weekday except Wednesday, which is devoted to administrative tasks. Entering its eighteenth year of operation, the clinic travels to 22 locations around the Miami metropolitan area, and works in conjunction with community partners such as schools, churches, libraries and community centers.
As he delivers free health care to impoverished neighborhoods, Khaw works with a nurse practitioner, medical assistant, driver/registrar, social worker/mental health counselor, Jackson residents and Miller School students. The blue clinic will never transport Khaw down boulevards paved with gold, and he couldn't care less.
"Money is not a motivating factor for me," says Khaw, who unwinds by playing keyboards with a local jazz band, and the organ at his church on Sundays. "It never has been.
"My goal in life is not to try to impress anybody, have the biggest car, the nicest house. This type of work is what I want to do for the rest of my life."
