MANGILAO, Guam (GCC) — This Saturday, April 15, 2023 parents and guardians are invited to bring their children to the Micronesia Mall Center Court and participate in the Teddy Bear Island Clinic. The event is a community program geared towards reducing children’s fear and anxiety around medical personnel, procedures, and vaccinations. Through fun, interactive play with a free teddy bear (while supplies last), the program hopes to increase health literacy and promote healthy behaviors while simultaneously inspiring Pacific Islander youth to seek out medicine or allied health as potential careers.
Children will play the role of the doctor and teddy bears will be their patients. Children will perform these tasks with guidance by students from the Guam Community College and the University of Guam studying to be health professionals. Teddy bears will go through different stations that involve various processes of seeing a medical doctor. The free event is open to the public from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The Teddy Bear Island Clinic was created by former Saipan and Guam resident and soon-to-be medical doctor, Ageline Sahagun Salas. She is expected to receive her medical degree next month from the Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
“I hope this event motivates kids to make healthy choices, be less afraid of doctors and other medical staff, and maybe even inspire them to become one (a doctor) someday,” said Salas.
Salas graduated from Marianas High School, Saipan in 2012 before moving to Guam to pursue higher education. Salas knew that the medical assisting program at GCC would expose her with the right skills and mindset to enter the medical field. During her time at GCC, Salas was the president of the Science and Math Club, and a GCC-LSAMP (Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, Leadership and Academic Enhancement) student that followed the pathway leading her to where she is now.
Salas earned her Certificate in Medical Assisting in Spring 2014 from the Guam Community College and furthered her education and obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of Guam in Spring 2017. Salas proceeded to two-years of research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and was then granted a full scholarship to attend Weill Cornell Medicine for her Medical Degree.
Salas will commit to a five-year combined residency training in both Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.
Ageline Sahagun Salas
