340 West 10th Street
Fairbanks Hall, Suite 6200
Indianapolis, IN 46202-3082
317-274-5000
Web: http://medicine.iu.edu
Last year, Dr. Chuck Dietzen (IUMD ’87) got a call from the IU School of Medicine asking him to speak at the induction ceremony for the Gold Humanism Award, an honor society for students, residents, and professionals who display excellent bedside manner and compassion. As the founder of the Timmy Foundation—an Indianapolis-based non-profit that supports sustainable health projects in developing countries and in the United States—Dietzen was an apt choice. Many of the awards were going to people who had volunteered with the Foundation.
Founded in 1997, the Timmy Foundation has involved thousands of volunteers, including high school, college, and medical students, as well as medical professionals, with philanthropic medicine. Every year, the Foundation sends as many as 300 students to deliver healthcare in both developing nations and throughout impoverished places in the United States.
For Dietzen, the desire to help those less fortunate began in childhood. Growing up north of Kokomo, Indiana, the Dietzen family took in 150 foster children over 20 years through the Catholic Charities Program of the Lafayette Diocese. “We had children from some of the local migrant camps and children of different ethnicities,” Dietzen said, “and it was just a great way to grow up.”
Dietzen’s love of animals led him to Purdue, where he majored in animal sciences. Set on becoming a veterinarian, Dietzen’s mother led him to change course. “By the time I was a teenager, my mom was saying to me, ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be a pediatrician? You really seem to have a gift for working with children,” he said. “I realized my mom was right and my real calling was to take care of kids, I withdrew from the vet school and applied to medical school.”
After graduating from IUSM, Dietzen began practicing as a physical medicine and rehabilitation doctor in 1991. He built his practice, published papers, and did all the things he thought successful doctors were supposed to do. But Dietzen’s desire to help others beyond the confines of his regular work remained strong. And when one of Dietzen’s residents asked if he knew anyone who could help set up medical relief programs in India, he jumped at the chance. In January 1997 he made the first of four trips to India over a 14-month period.
“I was blessed to get to meet Mother Theresa in March 1997,” Dietzen said. “I have a letter she wrote, and she gave me some gifts. At the time I thought these were extraordinary people, but I discovered they were ordinary people doing extraordinary things because of their faith. And I decided I could do that myself.”
When asked by colleagues in India if he could establish a stateside foundation to assist in their efforts, Dietzen initially balked at the idea of creating another bureaucracy. A natural go-getter who played both rugby and football in college, Dietzen would have preferred to simply offer his own expertise. He realized, however, that he could create a foundation “to make it easier to do good things.”
“We live in a culture that makes it difficult to give of yourself because of liability,” Dietzen said. “My thinking was to take young people who think they want to serve others as doctors, nurses, therapists, and teachers and let them join us in that work. Then that would help them discern if it’s a real calling for them.”
So began the Timmy Foundation (named for Dietzen’s oldest brother who died in infancy) in March 1997. The nonprofit has helped channel funds, volunteers, and medical professionals to poor areas at home and abroad. College students work alongside medical professionals, learning how to take histories, blood pressures, and pulses. They’re in the thick of the triage, work with doctors in clinics, and get a very real-world sense of what it’s like to be a doctor. In recent years, many students fluent in Spanish have been critical in helping communicate with Hispanic patients.
Dietzen is most proud of the Foundation’s young volunteers. “Just watching what they do, I couldn’t be prouder of these students if they were my own sons and daughters,” he said. “They have great hearts and minds. They’re compassionate.” Several former foundation student volunteers have gone on to join the Peace Corps, Dietzen says. They’re also Lilly Scholars, medical school students, and now young doctors.
While more and more schools express interest in setting up chapters with the Foundation, Dietzen says a more pressing need is for more medical professionals willing to donate their time and serve as mentors for the young students. Dietzen knows firsthand the benefits doctors derive from the experience. “I’ve seen very seasoned doctors who have come up to me with tears in their eyes to say, ‘Thank you for reminding me why I became a doctor,” Dietzen said. “They don’t have prior authorizations, insurance companies, and case managers to deal with. They just take care of patients.”
Currently partnered with five international nonprofit groups in the developing countries of Columbia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Jamaica, and Nigeria, the Timmy Foundation will likely expand to work with more international and domestic partners. Dietzen is also hoping to assist in establishing the global medicine residency/fellowship at IUSM.
For Dietzen, whose medical director position at the Easter Seals Crossroads Rehabilitation Center in Indianapolis affords him the time to take his practice on the road, the chance to instill a passion for international and philanthropic medicine in young students is an added bonus. “I think colleges and medical schools do a good job of filling in [students’] gray matter,” Dietzen said. “If we can plug them into these developing places, I think they can get a better understanding of how you create a public health program and how you create preventive medicine.”
