Marilyn Casteel's Colleagues at Kanakanak Hospital
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Kanakanak Hospital
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History In 2013 we marked 40 years of tribal health care operation and management for the people of Bristol Bay. However, the history of organized health care in Bristol Bay is much longer. Prior to the coming of the Russians in 1818, the primary health care provider was the "angalkuk" or shaman. Doctors first came into Bristol Bay when the canneries opened in 1885. In 1904 Dr. Joseph Herman Romig opened a hospital in Carmel. It remained open in 1913 when Dr. Linus Hiram French relocated the hospital to Kanakanak and took over one of two school buildings. In 2013 Kanakanak Hospital marked 100 years of providing health care to the people of Bristol Bay.Over the past 100 years, the people of Bristol Bay have not only endured and survived life in a harsh climate and rugged terrain, they also suffered greatly from epidemics such as the Influenza Epidemic which reached Bristol Bay in 1919 and caused the death of thousands of people in western Alaska. The tuberculosis epidemic of the 1940s and early 1950s also took a heavy toll on the people in the region.Today, rather than TB and influenza epidemics, we struggle with diseases of a modern society that include chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. The life expectancy of our people has increased from 47 years of age in 1952, to 69.4 in 1998, still below that of U.S. residents and other Alaskans. We are strengthening our programs and services to address chronic illnesses as well as continuing to provide acute care services that dominated health care need much of the past 100 years for the people of Bristol Bay.MissionWe provide quality health care with competence, compassion, and sensitivity.VisionTo be a model of quality and financial sustainability.