A Testament to Servant Leadership

The voice spoke softly at first, but the message, revealed over time, was unmistakable.

 

Jeff Mapp never heard that voice with his ears, though. He heard it, instead, with his heart, he heard it deep within his soul, he heeded it, and he acted.

 

After graduating from Collegiate in 1997, Mapp headed to Hampden-Sydney College with no clear long-range plan. Then, in September of his freshman year, his life changed dramatically when he received word that his brother Joey, nine years his junior, would undergo surgery for a brain tumor at the VCU Medical Center.

 

“My parents (Karen and Steve) had had a consult visit with the neurosurgeon, Dr. John Ward,” Mapp said one day recently as he reflected on his journey. “It was scary news to get, but afterwards, they said, ‘You know, we just have this overwhelming feeling that it’s going to be all right.’

 

“Looking back, I don’t think what they were saying was necessarily prognostic. They were just saying, ‘We’re in the right place. We have the right doc. He’s going to take care of us.’ The peace that he gave them was the influence that made me say, ‘Man, this (becoming a physician) is what I want to do with my life.’ That planted the seed for pediatrics, that whole concept of caring for the child and also the family.”

 

Joey’s surgery was successful, and on a follow-up visit, Karen Mapp shared with Dr. Ward that the experience had clarified Jeff’s path.

 

Do you have any advice for him? she inquired.

 

Does he speak Spanish? Dr. Ward responded.

 

Mapp recalls the story with a laugh: “Being a great mom, she said, ‘Yes, he speaks great Spanish.’ I was taking Spanish, but I don’t know that my Spanish was that excellent.”

 

Turns out Dr. Ward led an annual neurosurgical mission trip to Guatemala and invited Jeff to join his team, which he did in the summers following his sophomore and junior years.

 

“I did pretty much anything I could to be helpful like helping nurses when they put in IV’s, holding kids, calming kids, carrying boxes,” he said. “I was just a put-me-to-work guy. Ostensibly, I was there as an interpreter because of my Spanish. I could maybe help them find a restaurant, but I couldn’t translate anything from a nurse or doctor.”

 

He was enthralled.

 

“It was an amazing opportunity,” he said. “For that to be the way I first experienced delivering medical care, I’ve always seen medicine through that lens. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but that planted the seed for where I am now.”

 

So where is he now? It’s a long story but a compelling one, a testament to servant leadership and humble service.

 

After graduating from Hampden-Sydney in 2001 (B.S in biology), Mapp enrolled at the VCU Medical School (Class of 2005), stayed for his pediatrics residency (2005-2008), then joined Pediatric Associates of Richmond. In 2015, he earned an MBA through an executive program at the University of North Carolina.

 

“Our thought process as a practice was that we needed someone from a business standpoint to take the lead,” he said. “In hindsight, that’s a big piece of this puzzle because I was starting to get back into mission work when I finished the degree.”

 

In 2018, he and his wife Kimball, a pediatric nurse, traveled with a medical team to Nicaragua, shared in patient care, observed the treatment model, and decided that the time was right to create their own organization that would minister to underserved children (and their families) in Central America.

 

Later that year, they co-founded Extra Mile Pediatrics. He envisioned the non-profit only as an adjunct to his medical practice. The voice, though, continued to beckon.

 

“It (mission work) was something I was passionate about,” Mapp said. “I wanted to do more of it and do it the right way. We developed the model first and then found the communities.

 

“The way we practice completely hinges on being able to see the same families over and over. There are places that are too big, too spread out, and with too much ingress and egress for that to work, so we found communities where we could say, A, do they have this kind of care? If they don’t, this works. And B, would this be a community where we could create longevity and relationships?”

 

Extra Mile Pediatrics now serves patients in five locales in El Salvador and three in Guatemala. Mapp and his team travel to El Salvador in April and October and Guatemala in January and July. Visits typically last one week.

 

Between 12 and 15 volunteers comprise a team, which can include doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, non-medical assistants, and sometimes pharmacists and therapists. Kimball and their daughters Brantley,17, and Nora, 13, have been heavily involved as well.

 

So far, so good, Mapp says.

 

“It takes a couple of years to know if our focus on seeing the same kids over and over really works,” he said. “Now we have enough trips under our belt to see that we get a pretty high rate of return (patients). Our lowest is maybe 40 percent. The highest is over 80 percent.

 

“There’re two important things about that follow-up. Medical advice depends on trust. If someone is invested in your family and community and keeps coming back, your buy-in is so much better. And a lot of things we do as pediatricians totally rely on longitudinal data. You can’t assess things like nutrition, growth, and development in one day. I don’t think you can do impactful pediatric care unless you’re doing it with the same kids over and over.”

 

Mapp recently stepped away from his medical practice to devote his attention on Extra Mile Pediatrics.

 

“It became the thing I felt like I was supposed to be doing,” he said. “There’s so much need everywhere. There’s always going to be more of it to do.”

 

Once again, the voice had spoken. He’d answered the call.

 

“It’s interesting,” he said. “I was called into medicine, but that call manifested itself in Guatemala with Dr. Ward. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but there’s always been a component for me that medicine is tied to service medicine, particularly in populations that don’t have other alternatives or lack resources.

 

“I believe there’s a purpose for all of us. I feel that, over time, there’s been a clear path to where I am now. I was introduced to medicine in a service capacity in a severely underserved area and always felt a pull to go back. Every time I do, I feel a sense of fulfillment. I feel like that’s where I’m supposed to be.”

 

Mapp knows that challenges lie ahead. They energize him, though. They motivate him. They give meaning to his life.

 

“It’s such hard work physically,” he said. “It’s hot and sweaty and dirty. You come home physically exhausted but mentally supercharged because your heart’s full, and you’re excited to go back, and you’re already thinking about what you can do better the next time.

        

“Working with children is energizing anyway. Kids are just fun, but there’s something about the way this work makes you feel. I’m certain I get more out of it than the patients get from me. I’m positive of it.”

  ~Weldon Bradshaw