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Physician visits Saipan after 15 years
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Posted on Mar 18 2019
A senior resident physician at the University of California San Francisco is on a visit to Saipan after being away for 15 years.
Leslie Palacios-Helgeson, senior resident physician at the UCSF, spoke of her journey at the Rotary Club of Saipan meeting last Tuesday. She was born and raised on Saipan before moving to UCSF to pursue medicine.
“Having grown up on family farms and life-and-death circumstances, I have always been interested in medicine,” she said. Palacios-Helgeson went to the Gonzaga University to pursue biology and philosophy as her pre-med.
“I did basic science in endometrial cancer for four years in Colorado before getting my medical degree,” she added, before ultimately deciding to become an obstetrics-gynecology specialist. She is now at UCSF doing her sub-specialty training in OB-GYN.
Palacios-Helgeson is currently doing some volunteer work at the Commonwealth Health Center through a program at the UCSF where senior resident physicians are brought to rural areas to provide healthcare.
“…A lot of women would go to their primary care providers and they won’t be comfortable talking about women’s issues—birth control, peripartum period, cervical cancer screenings, etc. They end up coming to [ob-gyn specialists],” she said.
“…A few more years of [training] and I am hoping to come back to the CNMI and serve again before 15 years is up,” she added.
Palacios-Helgeson told Saipan Tribune that she would be at CHCC until March 27, 2019.
