NEWS RELEASES
4/7/06 News Release
MEDIA CONTACT: Ruthann Richter at (650) 725-8047 ()
STANFORD PANEL TO ADDRESS IMMIGRATION PROPOSAL’S EFFECT ON PHYSICIANS
STANFORD, Calif. — Thousands have turned out to protest new legislation that could harshly punish illegal immigrants, but a panel at the Stanford University School of Medicine on April 10 will focus on another aspect of the proposal: How it could penalize doctors for treating those who are in the United States without proper authorization.
“It doesn’t just affect the person serving you a salad,” said Erik Cabral, a third-year medical student who will speak on the panel. “It may affect your physician.”
Legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would not only make being in the country illegally a felony, but would also make it a crime to offer aid to illegal immigrants. This could lead to situations in which doctors might be prosecuted for caring for such patients.
“They are human too—are we just supposed to deny them care?” Cabral said.
Cabral and fellow student Dora Castañeda initiated the panel when they became frustrated by the media’s portrayal of immigrants as uneducated, day laborers. Thousands of medical students, physicians, and nurses are children of immigrants and may not have had the chance to become health professionals if strict immigration policies had kept their parents out.
“I wanted to put a voice out there that was from a professional side—that as physicians, we are going to face immigration as an issue,” Cabral said.
The discussion will be held at noon in room M104 of the Alway Medical Building at the medical school. It is being sponsored by the medical school’s Office of Community Health, the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and the Stanford Center for Ethics. The presentation is open to the public.
Jayashri Srikantiah, JD, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and associate professor of law, will give a summary of the legislation. Cabral, Castañeda, and Eunice Sanchez Mata, MD, clinical instructor in family medicine, will share stories of their journey into medical school and address how immigration policy could affect their medical practice. Marilyn Winkleby, PhD, MPH, associate professor of medicine, will introduce the speakers and moderate the panel and the question-and-answer session following the discussion.
As a physician in training, Cabral said current immigration policies already affect his ability to treat people. He has encountered patients who are hesitant to receive care for fear of deportation, even ones who are here legally. Making illegal immigration a felony will only make the situation worse, he said.
“New Americans”, or those whose parents or they were born outside the United States, represent 28 percent of the students accepted to the School of Medicine in 2005. These are new leaders who are most likely to specialize in primary care medicine, and practice in inner-city and rural areas where medically underserved populations are concentrated and shortages of health care professionals are most acute.
For more information about the event, contact Winkleby at (650) 723-7055 or at winkleby@stanford.edu.
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The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation’s top 10 medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
