‘Almost every week, someone comes up to me and says, ‘You changed my life!’” said Dr. Theresa Wee.

The life-changing experience is pretty simple. They’re just going for a walk.

Every Saturday for the past three years, Wee has led a free hourlong walk around Patsy T. Mink Central Oahu Regional Park. She walks along with the group, talks story with everyone who shows up, hands out water and healthy snacks and gives health tips. Usually there are about 40 people who show up. Sometimes there are close to 70 people walking together along the winding pathway through the park, past the ball field and back to the aquatic center. It gets people off the couch, out of the house, into the sunshine and in the company of friendly people.

Wee was delighted when the national organization for Walk With a Doc contacted her to let her know that medical students at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine had inquired about starting a similar program near their campus in Kakaako.

“I felt like I was the lone voice on Oahu doing this,” Wee said. “The national headquarters put us together. It was meant to be.”

Eric Gresham, a fourth-year medical student at JABSOM, spent six months in outpatient training in Waimea on Hawaii island. While there he worked with Dr. Natalie Kehau Kong, who runs a Walk With a Doc event in her community every week. Gresham liked the social bonding that grew from the walks. “It harkens back to what primary care physicians used to be: the family doc, someone you knew, someone visible in the community seven days a week,” Gresham said.

Ken Stridiron, a first-year medical student with a master’s degree in public health, believes strongly in public outreach and sees Wee as a role model. “She’s an everything woman,” Stridiron said. “Her reach in the community is so far beyond her practice. She loves this.”

Gresham and Stridiron have joined with other JABSOM students and faculty, with support from Wee, to start Walk With a Future Doc once a month near their campus in Kakaako, an area that has developed a reputation for thorny social issues stemming from a persistent homeless encampment nearby. The first walk is planned for 9 a.m. April 28; walks will continue every fourth Sunday at 9 a.m.

“We have a pretty good relationships with the folks there,” Gresham said. Medical students run a weekly health clinic where they provide services like wound care, blood sugar checks, vision screening and vaccinations to homeless people living in Kakaako. The future docs feel it will be good for everyone, and for Kakaako, to invite the public to come enjoy a walk in the pretty oceanside park, to talk about health and just be people together without rank or power structure.

“We’re all in this together,” Stridiron said. “This is a way for us to interact with each other cordially.”

For doctors and future doctors, these walks can provide health benefits as well. “With the advent of electronic health records and all that time spent trying to find the right code for reimbursement, that’s less time doctors get to spend talking with patients,” Gresham said. This kind of easy socialization and community-building can be a tool to prevent physician burnout. Wee finds that she rarely ends up talking to people about their specific health problems. “We talk about grandchildren or Japanese castles or whatever,” she said. “It’s just people walking together.”

WALK WITH A FUTURE DOC

>> When: 9 a.m. Sunday, April 28, and every fourth Sunday

>> Where: Kakaako Waterfront Park, 102 Ohe St.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.