Newsmaker
Monday, August 24, 1998
Name: Arleen Jouxson-Meyers
Age: 56
Position: President, Hawaii Coalition for Health
Education: University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), UH
Pastimes: Swimming
Dr. Arleen Jouxson-Meyers says she has a bit of her father in her -- "making Plexiglas taillights in the kitchen." Physician fights for patients
An innovative man, he took a contract to design and manufacture automobile taillights at home while maintaining a parts inventory for an engineering company and doing assorted other jobs to support his family, she said.
Her own "taillight" is a coalition to fight for patient's rights, which she put together while running a Wahiawa pediatrics practice, fighting breast cancer, raising a 16-year-old daughter, Courtney, and going to law school.
A South African born in Johannesburg, Jouxson-Meyers recently received a $1,500 national award and trip to Washington, D.C., from the Roscoe Pound Foundation, an American trial lawyers association.
She was cited for her efforts to protect physicians and patients from managed-care abuses and protecting Hawaii's nonprofit hospitals from a for-profit organization's takeover. She also has been named Physician of the Year by the Hawaii Medical Association Alliance.
A naturalized American, Jouxson-Meyers practiced medicine in Johannesburg for five years.
Her family immigrated to the U.S. in 1974. "We hated the politics in South Africa," she said. "It was a time of apartheid and tremendous oppression of the blacks." She and her husband, Edwin, had vacationed in Hawaii, and decided to come back because they were impressed so many ethnic groups were living together peacefully.
Required to repeat her residency, she entered a three-year pediatrics program at the former Children's Hospital, got a University of Hawaii master's degree in public health and directed a federally funded program for children with lung disorders.
She started a pediatrics practice in Wahiawa in 1979. In 1994, "disgusted with managed care," she entered UH's law school. "I just felt like I had my last asinine conversation with somebody telling me how to practice medicine."
Jouxson-Meyers formed the Hawaii Coalition for Health in December 1996, asking Hawaii doctors to contribute $25 to get it going. About 400 signed up. The coalition incorporated and has expanded to about 800 members with physicians now paying $150 per year and citizens joining for a $5 fee.
Jouxson-Meyers said she gets a lot of letters praising the public-advocacy group's work, but some doctors are alienated. "If issues that affect doctors are adverse to the public, we take the side of the public."
The coalition has piled up some impressive accomplishments. Among them, it got HMSA to revise some unacceptable features in its physician contracts last year and it pushed a patients' rights bill through the Legislature.
While that was going on, Jouxson-Meyers was studying for a law degree and going through chemotherapy. She had a bilateral mastectomy after a routine mammogram detected breast cancer last September. The chemotherapy left her five credits short of graduating from law school in May. She's finishing those now.
Meanwhile, she's working on a new vision to pull together all stakeholders in health plans to set standards for various health care issues, including contracts.
By Helen Altonn, Star-Bulletin
