HONOLULU — Kaiser Permanente lately honored Melanie Shim, MD, and Felicitas Livaudais, MD, because the 2023 recipients of the nationwide David Lawrence Neighborhood Service Award. The annual award honors Kaiser Permanente staff in every of the group’s eight areas for excellent volunteer actions that enhance neighborhood well being and wellness. To have fun the accomplishments of Dr. Shim and Dr. Livaudais, Kaiser Permanente will donate a complete of $20,000 to the Maui Emergency Caregivers Respite Fund, Camp He Ola Ke Keiki for youngsters with diabetes, IMUA Household Companies and Associates of the Kids’s Justice Heart.
Dr. Melanie Shim is a pediatric endocrinologist at Kaiser Permanente Mapunapuna Medical Workplace. With over 25 years of volunteer service, Dr. Shim is dedicated to creating the lives of youngsters with diabetes more healthy and happier. Dr. Shim partnered with the American Diabetes Affiliation in Hawaii to ascertain He Ola Ke Keiki, the state’s solely in-person summer time camp for youngsters and youths with kind 1 or kind 2 diabetes. Over a four-day, three-night keep on Oahu’s North Shore, individuals develop higher self-confidence, learn to handle their diabetes, and make lifelong friendships. Along with serving because the camp’s medical director, Dr. Shim has constructed partnerships with native farms to advocate wholesome consuming and has established assist and train teams for individuals affected by diabetes.
Whereas her intensive volunteer work additionally contains Particular Olympics and Lady Scouts of America tasks, her ardour is with the American Diabetes Affiliation. Dr. Shim serves on ADA’s management board and leads initiatives like Venture Energy, which focuses on weight management for youngsters. Averaging 200 volunteer hours yearly, she additionally speaks on the John A. Burns College of Drugs and conferences nationwide. Dr. Shim will break up her $10,000 donation between the Hawaii Alzheimer’s Affiliation’s Maui Emergency Caregivers Respite Fund and the American Diabetes Affiliation’s He Ola Ke Keiki diabetes camp.
Dr. Felicitas Livaudais is a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente Kihei Clinic. She has devoted 300 hours yearly over the previous 17 years to varied causes within the Maui neighborhood. Dr. Livaudais serves on the board of the Associates of the Kids’s Justice Heart, aiding youngsters in foster care and people struggling abuse, and has been instrumental in offering sources like donated cell telephones and glasses to youngsters in want. She has been a board member of IMUA Household Companies for 17 years, enhancing providers for youngsters with particular wants and supporting the addition of autism providers. As a current board member of the Hawaii chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Maui, Dr. Livaudais has organized occasions to unite pediatric physicians and advocate for affected person care.
She can also be a mentor on the John A. Burns College of Drugs, the place she takes pleasure in her mentees who’ve grow to be practising physicians in Maui. Dr. Livaudais’ work with the Ho‘oikaika Partnership focuses on adversarial childhood experiences and educating social staff and the neighborhood. She can also be concerned with Venture Imaginative and prescient, aiding the homeless and people continuously using shelters. Her efforts prolong to fundraising, notably for the Associates of the Kids’s Justice Heart, to construct a house for younger adults getting older out of foster care. Dr. Livaudais will break up her $10,000 donation between IMUA Household Companies and Associates of the Kids’s Justice Heart.
The David Lawrence Neighborhood Service Award is called for David Lawrence, MD, former chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente and a lifelong advocate for enhancing well being.