Shana Alexander, MD, embarks on mission of a lifetime
Faith is an important part of Shana Alexander’s life – as it is for her family – her husband, Jared, and children, Alivia, 12, and Anden, 8. Shana, a physician with Healthsource OH Eastgate Pediatrics and former community physician leader of Cincinnati’s east region, is leaning mightily on that faith as she and her family prepare to move to Nicaragua in October. It’s a big leap, but there have been many smaller steps leading up to it over the past seven years.
“I had never imagined myself going on mission trips, but in March 2010, we decided to step out of our comfort zone and join a group from Crossroads Church on a medical mission to South Africa,” she explains. “It wasn’t quite the trip we had envisioned – we were hoping to build houses and dig in the dirt – instead I filled in for a doctor who dropped out of the mission at the last minute, and we wound up doing clinical care. But a seed was planted.”
Six months later, Jared had an opportunity to go to Nicaragua working with an organization called Amigos for Christ. Their mission focused on four key areas: water and sanitation, healthcare, education and nutrition, and economic development. Shana soon found herself alongside her husband there digging trenches for water lines, doing “an insane amount of physical labor,” and loving every bit of it.
More trips to Nicaragua followed, and in March 2016, Crossroads Church approached the Alexanders about relocating there to foster and develop the relationship between the church, Amigos for Christ and Compassion International, a Christian child advocacy organization. The time seemed right, and they agreed to go.
“When I went into pediatrics, I knew I wanted to help the underserved,” she says. “But I also have a passion for helping women and children living in poverty, for doing work in community development.”
In Nicaragua, which is the poorest country in Central America, she will have plenty of opportunities to explore her passion. Nearly half of the population lives on $1 a day. Roughly 67 percent of children there will not finish the sixth grade.
“For the first six months we’re there, I’ll be focusing on getting our family settled and making sure the kids are okay,” Shana says. “After that, I’m not sure what I’ll do. The medical system in Nicaragua is set up so that there are very few jobs available for pediatricians in a hospital setting. So I may end up volunteering as a child advocate or doing health education.”
Despite having taken four years of Spanish in high school and college, neither Shana nor Jared are fluent in the language. So they will initially stay in Grenada for a month to attend language school. Meanwhile, Jared and Alivia are taking Spanish lessons at home to get a head start.
“I’m excited, nervous and scared,” Shana admits. “But our family has always been about service to others, wherever we happen to be. So going to Nicaragua seems like a natural extension of how we’ve tried to live our lives. We believe that this experience will help us grow in ways we can’t predict or understand.”
They’ve committed to living in Nicaragua for two years. What happens after that will depend on how things go. “We’re open to staying longer,” she says, “but we’ll make that decision when the time is right. Speaking for myself, I feel certain that what I have learned from working with my colleagues at Healthsource, Crossroad Community Health Center and Cincinnati Children’s has prepared me for the work I will do there.”
