Thoughtful conversations with the people of Maine

Part of what we do in medicine is building trust with patients. You can't try too hard. That doesn't seem to work. Sometimes it's just luck in that you treat a person early on who is influential in the community, they like you, kind of quietly the word spreads that you're okay.

Alice stands for asset limited, income constrained employed. And so what that means is these are working individuals who are really struggling to get by. They barely make ends meet every month. And in our state, the data shows that 42% of households in Maine are at that Alice threshold or below.

The value lies in actually knowing the families and seeing people longitudinally. I will see people on the street now and they will say, see this 20-year-old you delivered this child. And I'm like, that is a whole other generation. And I think to be able to say, I know your father, I know your mother, I know your grandparents, I know your children. The context in that just gives us such valuable information.