Although September had already begun, the weather remained hot on September 3, when a special lecture was held at the Raphael Center, located near Changgyeonggung Palace in Seongbuk-gu. The lecture was given by Dr. Hyein Choo, Director of the Salim Medical Cooperative Clinic and recipient of the 2025 POSCO TJ Park Prize for Community Service. This lecture was organized as part of the “Senior Academy: Raphael Life and Sharing, 3rd Course,” a program run by the Raphael Nanum Foundation through the end of this year. The Senior Academy is a lifelong, tailored education program for senior doctors and other healthcare professionals, designed to cultivate future medical volunteers.

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The Raphael Nanum Foundation has a particularly meaningful connection with the POSCO TJ Park Foundation. Its affiliate, Raphael Clinic, was the recipient of the POSCO TJ Park Prize for Community Service in 2016. The Raphael Clinic was established in 1997 under the leadership of Professor Kyuri Ahn of Seoul National University College of Medicine’s Catholic Professors’ Association, with the goal of addressing the poor medical conditions faced by migrant workers in Korea. Today, Professor Ahn serves as both Chairman of the Raphael Nanum Foundation and a member of the POSCO TJ Park Foundation Board of Directors, making this event even more significant.

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Dr. Choo’s lecture, entitled “Medical Care Linking the Lives and Health of Persons with Disabilities,” was conducted both in person and online via Zoom, allowing many people to join the discussion. At the beginning of her talk, Dr. Choo highlighted the challenges that people with disabilities face in accessing healthcare in their daily lives, illustrating her points with real clinical cases. She emphasized that the role of medicine extends beyond simple treatment to safeguarding quality of life.

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She went on to introduce in detail the multidisciplinary team-based primary care model implemented at the Salim Medical Cooperative Clinic. A multidisciplinary approach involves experts from various fields contributing independently from their own expertise, while integrating their findings to reach the best possible solutions. At Salim Clinic, physicians in internal medicine and surgery, dentists, oriental medicine doctors, nurses, social workers, rehabilitation therapists, and caregivers work together to provide comprehensive care. According to Dr. Choo, the team manages the entire process in an integrated manner, including assessment and evaluation, testing, treatment, patient education, medication adherence, polypharmacy management, and connecting patients with community resources.

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In particular, Dr. Choo personally makes weekly home visits to patients who cannot easily come to the clinic. Through these outreach efforts, people with disabilities who are at risk of being excluded from medical services are able to receive consistent and ongoing care.

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Looking ahead, Dr. Choo proposed three major directions for the future of medical services. First, she stressed the need to improve the primary care physician program for persons with disabilities. She suggested revising the system to allow clinic-level registration, introducing a comprehensive reimbursement framework, reducing out-of-pocket costs, and incorporating dental home-visit services. Second, she emphasized the urgent need for continued public awareness. In particular, she pointed out the importance of widely promoting that home visits are available for people with intellectual, developmental, or mental disabilities who have difficulty visiting medical institutions. Such information should be shared not only with persons with disabilities and their families, but also with welfare centers, special education teachers, care facilities, personal assistants, and independent living support centers. Third, Dr. Choo highlighted the importance of providing education for healthcare providers in the disability primary care program. She explained that medical staff must have a thorough understanding of disability-related welfare policies and care systems in order to fulfill their role as coordinators effectively.

 

 

Dr. Choo concluded her lecture with the powerful message: “For one person to be healthy, the whole village must be healthy.” Both on-site and online participants gained a vivid understanding of the current state and challenges of healthcare for persons with disabilities, and the lecture served as a valuable reminder that connecting the lives and health of persons with disabilities is a vital responsibility shared by society as a whole.