SPCEIAL/AAPI CONVENTION
‘I am extremely
proud of my dad’
Dr Mamta Singhvi, 26, is the new president of the American Association of Physicans of Indian Origin’s Medical Stu- dents/Resident Fellows Section.
And with her father Dr Ajeet Singhvi as the
AAPI president, they are part of AAPI history
as the first father-daughter duo driving the
organization.
She is an alumnus of the University of
California, Los Angeles, and the UCLA
Medical School, from where she received her
medical degree in 2008 as the youngest grad-
uate at age 24. Hemet, California-born and
raised Mamta completed her preliminary year
internship in medicine at UCLA-Olive View
Medical Center, a county hospital serving the
uninsured, and has just started her residency
in Radiation Oncology at the Baylor College of
Medicine in Houston, Texas.
How does it feel to be part of AAPI history?
It’s very exciting. I am extremely proud of
my dad. He’s worked very hard to get to this
point and to be able to represent so many
physicians. I am more excited for him than I
am about myself.
What are your top priorities as the new head
of AAPI’s MS/RF Section?
I feel very lucky because AAPI’s main focus
in recent years has been on the younger gen-
eration and they’ve realized the importance and the
strength of AAPI lies in ensuring that the future is
taken care of.
But, in terms of issues that we are dealing with,
one of the things that makes me the most passionate
personally is the affordability of higher education.
It’s becoming harder and harder to be able to pay —
let alone college — to go to graduate school for a nor-
mal, average family. So, that’s something we really
need to really drive home on a political and legisla-
tive level. I believe if our voices are heard in terms of
how much loans we have, how much debt we have
coming out of at least eight years of undergraduate
and graduate school combined, that’s got to be
something that I hope to focus on.
How do you propose to bring this to the fore? Is it
by joining with the senior members of AAPI and
meeting with legislators in a concerted manner? I
believe medical graduates at the internship and resi-
dency training period — besides working virtually
24/7 — don’t make anything more than $40,000 to
$50,000 a year; compared to a law graduate with
three years in law college starting off with anywhere
from $70,000 to $80,000 a year. And the medical
school grads still have the massive loans and debts to
pay off. I believe this is a major reason why Jewish
parents today encourage their children to go to law
school instead of medical college?
Exactly. Personally, I’ve been blessed to have gone
through public school since kindergarten all the way
through medical school, which makes me feel that I
had a world class education in California’s public
education system. But on the same level, I feel lucky
because my tuition has been so much less than if I
went to any private school. So, minimally, I am pay-
ing $20,000 a year for my four years of undergrad-
uate and $20,000 a year for my four years of med-
Mamta Singhvi, left, with her father Ajeet Singhvi
ical school — and that’s at a public school. After
eight years of doing this, we start off at $40,000 to
$50,000 a year for the next at least three to seven
years while we are in training. That puts you at an
average age of 31 to 23 years by the time you’ve fin-
ished all your training and still making nothing for
how much school and how much hard work you’ve
put in.
One of the things that is very much lacking in our
education in medicine and education as a whole, is
how to be leaders, how to be lobbyists, how to be real
advocates for yourself, for issues that you’re passion-
ate about, for your patients. So, we are actually put-
ting together a seminar, a workshop dedicating to
inculcating leadership qualities in young physicians.
That will entail how to lobby, how to get your point
across to the people and make a difference.
I’ve been lucky enough to have traveled to India
numerous times and I’ve done multiple medical
missions there. I’ve worked at the largest public hos-
pital in Rajasthan and Jaipur. I’ve worked at the
largest cancer institute in India in Mumbai, and I’ve
worked at the AIDS Center in Chennai, where the
first case of HIV/AIDS (in India) was discovered.
This has all been so eye-opening for me — to be
trained in America, to have gone to school in
America, where obviously we have the most expen-
sive health-care system in the world with all the
resources available to you, and then to starkly con-
trast that with the work I’ve done in India… And,
one of the focuses that myself and my father will
have, will be to make it possible for medical students
and residents to travel, not only to India, but to any-
where in the world, where they think that they’ll get
some sort of experience out of it to see how it is to
train with limited resources, and to just get exposure
to a different environment.
Ajeet R Singhvi
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer
pledged that the Medicare reimbursement issue would be fixed permanently.
Do you believe them?
Yes. They were very genuine in their approach. I believe they got the mes-
sage. AAPI has been working very hard on this issue. In fact, the problem
may have been that we have not explained this to them right. Since 1990s,
there has been no increase. The $1 we used to get in the ’90s has gone down
to being worth only 30 cents. On top of that, they are talking of a 21 percent
cut. So, how are we going to survive? Also, on top of that, there have been
severe cuts in procedures — like angiography, or cardiac bypass surgery or
stress test or endoscopy. Rather than raising, they have cut drastically on
these procedures. In fact, a lot of doctors are finding it very hard to survive
and bankruptcy among physicians has gone up. They cannot practice inde-
pendently.
A perennial question I ask all incoming AAPI presidents is that for all the
talk that AAPI represents over 45,000 to 50,000 Indian-American physi-
cians, its membership rolls have never topped 7,000. How are you going to
increase AAPI’s membership?
It’s not just for AAPI; it’s across the board. In fact, AAPI’s membership is
way better than the AMA’s. AMA membership is drastically falling, instead of
rising. AAPI’s patron (life) membership rose five-fold just last year alone. But
the main thing is, we have to serve our membership. The moment people
realize — and Indians want value for their money — we are working for them,
they will definitely join the ranks. I’m very encouraged that all our new mem-
bers are young physicians — 80 percent of all those joining AAPI as patron
members are young physicians. But we will have to continue working. One
member at a time is the key. In Hemet, (California) we have over 50 mem-
bers and all of them are patron members. If, in every town, two or three
physicians who are dedicated can go and explain that AAPI is doing a good
job, then we can enroll more members and increase our membership. I don’t
see any reason why AAPI will not have a large number of members. I hope
that one day, every physician of Indian origin will be an AAPI member.
You also said that AAPI needs a full-time executive director. How serious are
you in having such a director and is AAPI willing to make the kind of invest-
ment, which for example the Asian American Hotel Owners Association does,
in having a top-notch professional and paying him like over $250,000 a year
to take care of the day-to-day business of the organization?
It’s not only me. The whole executive committee and the board of trustees
are very serious about it. There are four top Indian-American professional
organizations — AAPI, AAHOA, SABA (South Asian Bar Association) and
TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), and AAPI is the largest. But three of them
have an executive director and AAPI doesn’t. Having said that, it is essential
for the continuity of AAPI as well as for a constant communication with the
vendors, pharmaceutical companies and general membership. Because no
matter what, we are still practicing physicians. For example, I am a solo prac-
titioner and so, it is very important that at the base there is somebody con-
stantly working and having a dialogue with the pharmaceutical industry and
other vendors. So, my hope is, one, we are very serious. The board of trustees
and the governing body approved a loan of $150,000 for the next three years
and the general body has approved it as well. And, hopefully, in the next three
months, we will have an executive director. And, I hope that this time our
experience will be much more pleasant. We’ve had executive directors, three
or four times, but each time they did not survive mainly because we did not
have a clear-cut demarcation of responsibilities and expectations. This year
we are doing that.
Second thing is, we have been hesitant that our president’s power will be in
some way or the other reduced. I do not have any qualms about that. I am
very sure that we all can work together and AAPI’s power will increase, rather
than that of some individuals.
You have also said that to achieve AAPI’s goals, it is imperative to establish a
legislative office in Washington, DC. Will you do that during your tenure and
are you going to retain Dino Teppara’s services as legislative director?
Dino has done a fine job. In fact, I have known Dino since the days he was
chief of staff of (US Representative) Joe Wilson (South Carolina Republican).
So Dino’s services will be retained. My feeling is that we will have a legislative
office and we will also work toward getting an office — an AAPI secretariat —
in India too because we are working extensively in India. We have an Indo-
US Health Summit which is in its fourth year and the government of India is
recognizing our efforts. Now with this reciprocity of licensing in India and the
new medical schools and institutes coming up, (Indian Health Minister
Ghulam Nabi) Azadsaab is very interested that academicians and
researchers and professors go there and work and teach.
