Mini-Medical School at JABSOM is helping to transform lives

By Cynthia Yip

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    HONOLULU (KITV) — The John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa offers a Mini-Medical School on Healthy Aging that is now in its eleventh year.

Island News talks with a student who has been coming to the Mini Med School since its beginning and she says why the information shared is so vital.

Since 2014, the JABSOM Mini Med School has been providing the community with transformative learning experience, in fact it is so popular that within 24 hours, spots quickly fill up.

“I felt I felt that way when I started the program, and I still feel the same. That if you can apply the things you learn in this class, and because there’s such a range of topics, and you apply them to your life, you it can really transform how you live each day. It’s like having your own expert or doctor where you can just ask questions because there’s an abundance of questions for people where you know, the speaker is very relevant, they may have that condition, or they may know someone who has it,” said Patricia Lee, Ph.D., a Mini Medical School student at JABSOM.

Lee has been attending the Mini Med school since it began 11 years ago. The school is open to anyone in the community and is free. The spring class only had room for 150 Students. In the Fall, JABSOM will open the school, by adding 300 Students through Zoom.

“Many of them actually retired professionals, retired teachers, and they just want to learn more about their health so that they can stay healthy as long as possible. Some of them are caregivers. And so they have older people in their family who may have certain illnesses and who they’re caring for. Again, they want to learn more about healthy aging as well,” said Dr. Kamal Masaki, JABSOM Mini Medical School director.

The Fall Mini Med School begins in late September and will run for five consecutive Saturdays with spaces expected to fill up fast.

“It’s like getting tickets to Taylor Swift,” Lee said.

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