Rose Glickman, PhD
Rose's first surgical-educational mission with Heart
to Heart was to Samara in July 2004. Since then, she has been a team member
on nine more trips. She interviews parents, chronicles each mission,
interprets and serves as general factotum.
Between trips, Rose develops additional program materials. In 2006, she
wrote our first Medical Volunteer Handbook. Her succession of highly-practical
sections concludes with Rose's Story, a detailed recollection of her first
experience observing open heart surgery. Her brief introduction to that story
presages her extraordinary commitment:
My first experience in Samara with Heart to Heart was
absorbing, astonishing, profound. I am humbled by the enormity of describing
it, because of what I witnessed and experienced – well, it's incomparable.
I didn't know it then, but the trip was the beginning of my engagement with
a hitherto unimagined world.
Rose holds a PhD in Russian History from the University of Chicago, which
she put to good use teaching Russian history at various universities for 25
years, including UC Berkeley. She then ventured into the “real world” to work
with émigrés from the former Soviet Union for six years. She then moved to
Moscow, to work for the Ford Foundation, which developed her interest in
humanitarian work. Upon her return to the SF Bay Area, Rose began her
involvement with Heart to Heart. She is the author of two books, one on
Russian working class women and the other on the daughters of American
feminists.
“
Heart to Heart trips are true teaching missions.
We teach the local medical team how to diagnose,
operate, and take care of the children post-operatively themselves. We do not
do these things for them – we teach as we work together side-by-side.”
Dr. Janet Simsic, Lead Pediatric Cardiac Intensivist, Heart to Heart’s Tomsk and Rostov-on-Don Teams
Medical Director, Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit, Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Medical Director, Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit, Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Tomsk, Siberia, 2006: Janet Simsic, MD {far right} on her
first Heart to Heart mission, with Brenda Jarvis, RN {far left}, Lyndsey
Piland, RN {second to left}, and 14-year-old patient Yuri. Janet later commented,
“My experience in Siberia was so positive that after two trips, I also joined
Heart to Heart's team in the Volga District.”
Volunteer Commitment
Heart to Heart is a volunteer-driven organization. Without our
volunteers, we would not have been able to develop self-sustaining pediatric heart
programs where the lives of more than 12,000 children have already been saved. Over
the past twenty years, several hundred volunteers have supported us with their faith,
kindness, and hard work.
Some of our volunteers will never know or meet the children they have helped
save; others travel half a world away and work day and night to literally save the
lives of dying children.
Our medical volunteers return to Russia with us year after year – developing programs
as well as relationships founded on compassion and mutual respect. Our
administrative volunteers do everything it takes to support them and to document
Heart to Heart's work.
