Medical mission

Unsure what he wanted his next step to be, Colin Good took a break before heading to college.

Instead, he spent the year after high school on a medical mission trip.

“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with life,” said Good. “That was, I still consider, the most formative year of my life, I spent in east Africa and Kenya. And that kind of set me on the trajectory of medicine and opened my eyes as an 18-year-old to what it means to see the needs in a community and then to respond to those practically. And I felt healthcare was kind of uniquely positioned for that.”

More than a decade later, he’s now Dr. Colin Good, the newest healthcare provide at IU Health Jay’s Family First practice.

Good, 31, who served his residency at IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie and is finishing up his first month at Family First, said he chose IU Health Jay in large part because it allows him to use the full range of skills he learned as a family practice physician. He said in metropolitan areas, family medicine often deals with a lot of referrals to other physicians.

That, he has found, is not the case in Jay County.

“What’s different is seeing how the priorities of the individuals here are more toward, ‘If I can do something where I don’t have to drive 45 minutes to a specialist, I’d prefer that,’” Good said. “They expect their family doctor, their primary care doctor, to handle their issues as much as possible …

“And that is pretty significantly different than what I have mostly trained under. And I like it, but it is different in terms of an expectation.”

Good, whose parents are both from Indiana, grew up predominantly in rural Iowa — the town of Wayland, about 40 miles south of Iowa City, has a population of less than 1,000 — and the metropolitan Phoenix area, following the path of his father’s career as a pastor. During his formative years, he had several close friends whose parents were missionaries. So missions were always something that interested him, but it wasn’t until he made his own trip after high school that the medical aspect came into clear focus.

The church in Kenya his mission group was connected with sought help when violence erupted in 2008 following a disputed election. The goal of the group’s effort in Chepilat — about 110 miles east of Lake Victoria in southwest area of the East African country — was simply to form friendships in the rural area that was considered one of the most volatile in the country because it was on a tribal line.

“We ended up doing a lot of different things, like teaching English, playing a lot of soccer with kids, general health education … and just kind of serving … where the church felt there were needs,” Good said. “It was a feel-it-out-as-you-go sort of thing.”

He also got ill during his trip and ended up in a mission hospital. While that experience didn’t directly send him down the path of becoming a doctor, he feels having first-hand experience to limited healthcare access and infrastructure served as a subconscious spark.

“Those things set the tone for I think what became a pretty straight path for me into family medicine and seeing primary care filling that void to the questions I was asking and then also choosing to stay in a rural setting,” he said.

Upon his return from Kenya — he’s also spent some time in Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, Japan and China — he earned his bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University in 2013. He went on to get his master’s from Duke University and his osteopathic doctorate from Campbell University, located in Buies Creek, North Carolina, which is situated about halfway between Raleigh and Fayetteville. He moved to Muncie in June 2018 to do his residency at Ball Memorial.

Good and his wife, who he met while working at Ball Memorial, live in Muncie. He said his interests have evolved based on geography, but he’s always enjoyed hiking. He’s also passionate about music, having grown up playing trombone and cello.

He said his goal at IU Health Jay’s Family First practice is to provide the level of quality care he’d expect his family and friends to receive. He also sees himself as an educator to help improve the overall health-related knowledge of his patients.

“I really see my role as an advocate of my patients in a healthcare system which I think is sometimes very overwhelming and confusing, complicated even for us,” he said. “I can be that conduit to help people interpret the complexities of that and make sure that they always have someone in their corner making sure that they’re taken care of.”