POLITICS

‘Pennsylvania is sick’: Pocono surgeon on how he’d treat the state as governor

Kathryne Rubright
Pocono Record
Dr. Nche Zama poses for a photo in Stroudsburg on Monday, Nov. 1, 2021.

Dr. Nche Zama, a world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon, is preparing to pitch his gubernatorial platform to a hometown crowd this weekend.

Zama, a Harvard-trained doctor who has worked around the world, has never run for office before. A Republican, he’s focused on health care as well as education and the economy.

He will speak at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg.

Ahead of the event, he sat down with the Pocono Record to discuss his background, his priorities and how he’d approach problem-solving as governor.

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On the economy, education, health care

“This state is dying,” Zama said, when it comes to the “major pillars” of the economy, education and health care.

“We’re not performing at the level that we should. We should have a trillion dollar economy and a major global competitor in commerce. We should have a world-class education system to undergird our trillion-dollar economy. And we should have a health care system that brings value to our people.”

Taxes are too high and regulations too numerous when it comes to the economy, he said.

Education suffers from “ZIP code disease,” he said, “meaning that kids in certain ZIP codes have to endure a substandard educational system, and their performance is not at par with those in other ZIP codes.”

Health care is too expensive, he said, including for “many of our elderly, poor, our veterans” and there are “many pharmacy deserts,” or locations that do not have nearby pharmacies.

“Pennsylvania is sick,” he said. “As I’ve said on my campaign trail, Pennsylvania is very sick, and it needs a doctor.”

On how he’d find solutions

While Zama is clear about which three issues are top priorities for him, his approach to improving those facets of Pennsylvania is less about hyper-specific policy details and more about having the right people and process.

“I may not have all the answers, but I’m a strong believer in high-performance teams,” he said.

“And if we put high-performance teams who are committed and have a passion for human service, there’s nothing that we cannot accomplish to turn this state around and transform it to be the pre-eminent destination for anybody, anywhere in America and beyond.”

His strategy comes from the same way he’d approach a problem in medicine or science. If a patient came to him with an eye issue, for example, he wouldn’t address it alone because ophthalmology is not his specialty.

“And what do I do as a doctor? I convene a team of experts, ophthalmologists,” he said. “And also as a scientist — I have a Ph.D. in chemistry — I understand how to look at a problem, come up with a hypothesis, test that hypothesis experimentally, and evaluate the outcomes and results critically.”  

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On the COVID-19 pandemic

Dr. Nche Zama announced his candidacy for the governor of Pennsylvania at an event Thursday, May 20 at Shawnee Inn & Golf Resort. A world renowned surgeon, Zama came to the United States from Cameroon as a teenager.

Zama believes that better communication would have led to more unity and a less deadly pandemic.

“If we had not had mixed messaging and confusion — from a national platform, actually, not just state-wise — we would not be where we are now with the confusion about our children,” Zama said when asked about fights in schools over topics such as masking. “I always say communication is key, and because we don’t have communication from the levels of leadership to the point that we need, and society needs, it clears the way and opens the door to conspiracy theorists who can weaponize their message better.”

Rather than “condemning” people who do not believe in mask mandates or vaccines, Zama said, it’s important to ask, “How did they arrive at that?”

Had he been governor when COVID-19 began, Zama would have established a “preventive medicine and pandemic council made up of stakeholders that include scientists, health care experts, social workers, business people and regular community members.”

He’d still do that now — there will be another pandemic, Zama said.

On party affiliation

Zama is running as Republican, but his affiliation isn’t as overt as it is for many candidates. Neither “Republican” nor “GOP” appear on his website, and he doesn’t state his party in his introductory video, though his fundraising link does take users to WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform.

Speaking about how he feels responsible for all children across Pennsylvania, not only his own, Zama said, “That’s the type of thinking that I will promote as a leader, to end all these divisions that are based on this artificial human construct called race, economic status, or political affiliation, for that much.”

Party is “absolutely not” his top priority, he acknowledged when asked; rather, it’s the desire to serve Pennsylvania.

“True compassion doesn’t need reciprocity,” he said. “It’s not about who likes me, who doesn’t like me. I just want to do right. So I’m not embroiled in partisan politics. I am embroiled in issues that bring value to fellow humans.”

Why run as a Republican, as opposed to an independent or unaffiliated candidate?

“I embrace the U.S. Constitution. I embrace the American values — which are also the Republican values — of hard work, liberties, freedoms, love of nation, growth,” Zama said.

On his background

Zama grew up in a grass hut in Cameroon, where he knew from a young age that he wanted to attend school because he had seen the way school “transformed” his older cousin.

“When I entered elementary school, I started to devour everything that I was being taught. And so I lived in the village, but I was not there psychologically. I started to explore the world. Everything the missionaries taught us, I absorbed,” Zama said.

As a child, he witnessed his mother’s death due to excessive blood loss after childbirth. Afterward, he couldn’t stop thinking about how the nurse had kept repeating, “There’s no doctor.”

“So I was determined that I would be a doctor, so no child would ever have to experience what I just experienced, and no parent would have to suffer like I just witnessed my mother suffer,” Zama said.

He applied to the cheapest American colleges he found, and lived in a Baltimore YMCA until an employee connected Zama with a man who opened his apartment to him.

Zama earned bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in chemistry, as well as a master’s degree in management. The Cleveland Clinic and Harvard Medical School trained him in surgery. He was a missionary doctor before returning to the U.S., where, among other positions, he was the chief of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at the Guthrie Clinic in Sayre. He brought heart surgery to the Poconos when he joined the ESSA Heart and Vascular Institute at what was then the Pocono Medical Center.

Kathryne Rubright is a reporter covering the environment, northeast Pa. politics, and local news. She is based at the Pocono Record. Reach her at krubright@gannett.com.