The Richmonder 25: Dr. Jeff Mapp goes the distance to provide pediatric care

Ever since Dr. Jeff Mapp decided on medicine as a career as a freshman in college at the VCU School of Medicine, his goals were laser focused on one area. 

“I have always only been interested in doing the pediatric version.” he said. “If I ended up a surgeon, I would have wanted to do pediatric surgery. If I ended up as a cardiologist, I would have wanted to be a pediatric cardiologist.”

Mapp’s area is that of a general practitioner, more specifically an outpatient pediatrician. 

“I really love getting to know kids and their families over the course of time, as opposed to seeing them once,” he said. “In an ER or in a hospital, you may only have that one limited interaction with a family and bring them through whatever they're currently facing, but then you don't see them again. I am the flip side of that. I really want to have that longer-term relationship.”

The goal of his work is to intervene early and guide the parents to make sure the children have a trajectory throughout their development that allows them to have a healthy and resilient life.

Mapp, who grew up in Midlothian, has been able to do this in his practice at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond. But he and his wife Kimball, who is also a pediatric nurse, also founded a nonprofit in 2018, Extra Mile Pediatrics.

The organization is a medical mission that travels to small, out-of-the-way villages in El Salvador and Guatemala to provide repeated pediatric care to communities that don’t have access to treatment.  

“I found myself seeing these families and having discussions about their kids' eating habits and their parents' concerns over their size and those kinds of things,” Mapp said. “And I found myself saying, ‘Man, it's really hard for me to actually reassure these moms or these dads. And what would make it much more effective is if I could see you again in six months.’ And so that kind of became the basis for Extra Mile Pediatrics.”

The organization first started in El Salvador through family and friend connections with another nonprofit, and it grew organically from there. Since launching, more than 13 clinics have opened, helping more than 40 communities and more than 5,500 children, according to their website.

“Dr. Jeff Mapp is exactly the kind of Richmond leader this nomination is meant to honor,” said Christina Barille, board president of Extra Mile Pediatrics. “Someone who quietly takes it upon himself to make his community better every day! He improves lives through sustained, hands-on work in Richmond and through Extra Mile Pediatrics, while also doing it with humility rather than for recognition.”

Rebecca Moss has been with the organization since the beginning. Moss, who is the director of education for an organization called Global Surgical Expedition, is also the vice president of the board for Extra Mile Pediatrics. She first met the Mapps because both of their daughters were good friends.

“I wasn't working in global health prior to this,” she said. “It's something I wanted to do, but my experience with the Mapps and with the organization actually pushed me to complete my master's in public health with a focus on global health.”

The trips to Central America roughly happen every six months.

“We were going to Guatemala every January, then El Salvador in April, then back to Guatemala in July, then back to El Salvador in October,” Mapps said. “We had clinical teams going out every couple months, but they were revisiting these same communities every six months at a minimum,” said Mapps. “One of our focuses from a very early stage is how can we start to identify local practitioners, local nurses, local docs who we can work with consistently while we're here and start to build a local resource that over the course of five years or 10 years will be the sustainable solution.”

Mapp, who is also a long-distance runner and can be found on the trails at Pony Pasture, said his goal is to be able to walk away but leave a solid structure in place for families to have access to care on a regular basis and to not be the sole providers. 

Moss said they always return to the same clinics they helped set up years ago.  

“You meet the family, the children, and then take height and weight, which is a big component [since] we measure growth over time,” she said. They go see a triage nurse where they take vitals [and] they talk to them about any issues they might be having. Then they move on to the provider stage.”

The provider stage is where medications, glasses or menstrual kits are handed out. 

“We have stock glasses on hand, so they're able to get glasses. If they need specific prescriptions, then we bring those prescriptions back on the next trip,” Moss said. “We do dental care and [hand out] water filters, depending on the community.”

Jackie Lineberry, a pediatric hospitalist at VCU, has worked with the Mapps during their global outreach trips. She said seeing what they do firsthand has been an eye-opening experience. 

“It was very different from any other kind of global health work I had done previously,” said Lineberry. “It was really evident that the community leaders trusted the group (and) Dr. Jeff over time. And that the families really knew they could continue to ask extra questions. Dr. Jeff and Kimball are just phenomenal people all around. Their love for the people that they serve and for the work that they do is evident in every single one of their interactions.” 

Mapp's decision to help children in Central America grew from heading there as a freshman at VCU.

“I volunteered with a medical mission organization. It was a pediatric neurosurgeon from MCV who took his residents down to Guatemala every six months,” he said. “I went with them just to gain some experience and I fell in love with it immediately. It was the place, the people, the type of work we were doing, everything appealed to me. I knew once I was through my own training and was in practice and had the skill set to offer, I knew I wanted to get back to that kind of work.”

VCU is a sponsor of The Richmonder but was not allowed to influence or review this story.

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