In 1968, young Stanley Shaffer was a Kansas City boy who was mesmerized by magic. His passion was for things like pulling a coin from behind a friend’s ear, unhooking and re-hooking metal rings or predicting a single card selected sight unseen from a deck of 52.

Fast forward nearly four decades to 2005 and find that Shaffer, quite remarkably, is a “magician.” It’s really no surprise when you consider that Shaffer approaches life as what he calls a “hybrid” man, deriving great pleasure from bridging two disparate pictures into a unified vision.

Medicine and Magic diverge sharply in the minds of most westerners. But not in Haiti, where residents believe in voodoo and prayer is an essential part of what passes as medical care in its crudest forms. Shaffer, a medical doctor at St. Luke’s Hospital since 1991 and a respected neonatologist who cares for sick and premature infants in intensive care, sees Medicine and Magic as compatible concepts. His ability to conceive the previously unimagined may be a key in his ability to create it. Shaffer has created much previously unimaginable in Haiti. This makes him a highly deserving recipient of the 2005 Alumni Achievement Award from UMKC’s School of Medicine.

Shaffer, 50, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, has put aside cards, coins and metal rings. His brand of magic involves no illusion, only reality. There is no sleight-of-hand, only heart-in-hand compassion. He made his first trip to Haiti in 1983 and has returned more than 60 times, frequently leading small groups of UMKC medical students or taking his wife, son and daughter more than ten times each. His next trips with UMKC medical students are in January and April. This successful physician’s irresistible attraction to primitive Haiti uncannily illustrates the far-reaching impact of his hybrid nature.

The Republic of Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, comprises the western third of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, 710 miles from Miami, Florida and nearly 2,000 miles from Kansas City. It seems more like light years.

Haiti is slightly smaller than one of America’s tiniest states: Maryland. Since 1804 when it became the first black republic to declare its independence, Haiti has weathered all varieties of turbulence, including political upheaval and its oxymoron companion, “civil” unrest. Haiti lies in the hurricane belt and is subject to severe storms from June through October. More than 600 people are packed into each square mile of this place, which is subject to flooding, earthquakes and drought. These challenges are not the first in the life of a Haitian. The first, and perhaps greatest challenge, lies in just being born.

Rugged and tropical, Haiti is composed predominantly of Black Africans. The majority of people over age 25 have no formal schooling. Although 80 percent call themselves Roman Catholics, nearly all Haitians claim strong beliefs in voodoo. When the chances of surviving birth are as horrifying as they are in Haiti, one finds special solace in faith. Medical facilities are scarce and, for the most part, substandard in Haiti. The level of community sanitation is low.

“Ninety-seven percent of all babies are born at home with a dirt floor, under a thatched roof with no electricity, no water, and no one to help with the birth except an older relative. There is no simple hygiene or skilled assistance. Frequently, a glass shard or a machete is used to cut the umbilical cord,” said Shaffer.

“Ten percent of all births in Haiti result in the death of the baby, the mother or both,” he noted. “Haitian moms know it’s a frightful thing to be pregnant; all of them have had a sister or neighbor die in delivery.”

The accomplishments from his multiple trips to Haiti over 22 years create a memorable story, but Shaffer would insist this is not where the magic of his life began. Consider how he came to his choice of career, or how he met his wife, or even the path chosen by his son and daughter. Having children and a wife who are loving and compassionate is the most remarkable magic to Shaffer, a man who has helped so many. It is a story to be told.

Let's start by returning to his youth.

At 14, when most boys are consumed by rock music and sports, Shaffer knew with certainty the direction he wanted his life to take. Such clarity is unusual for a teen. Although both parents were in business, Shaffer wanted to be a doctor, specifically a pediatrician. Later, as he thought about college and medical school, serendipity struck.

"I read in the Sunday newspaper about a brand new medical program that had opened at UMKC. It was a six-year medical program where you could go to medical school directly out of high school. The program promised the ability to work with patients from the very first year. I was sold on it from that minute," said Shaffer. "I had done a lot of college interviews and been accepted by a lot of other schools, but I was really holding my breath that I could get into UMKC." He did. In fact, Shaffer was a member of only the second class to go through UMKC's nationally regarded six-year medical program.

Dr. Grey Dimond, who created and directed the new medical program, made it clear that only the most dedicated students would be likely to go the distance.

"I remember Dr. Dimond coming into the lecture hall during our first year, our first meeting perhaps. It was a get-together of 100 or so medical students. He said this is going to be an all-involving program and we would have to give up a lot of things to do medicine. He said it could even mean giving up our girlfriends and boyfriends. He advised us to look around the room and think about someone (as a potential future mate) in medicine," recalled Shaffer. "I was absolutely rebellious about that. I thought the last thing I was going to do was get involved with a medical student."

But the Fates took over again. Shaffer became good friends with a medical student named Kathy. She became his best friend, in fact; before the end of medical school, she became his wife and eventually, mother of his children and partner for three years in a pediatrics practice in Johnson County, Kansas. (The first woman pediatrician in Johnson County, she has continued the practice to this day.)

In 1979, Shaffer graduated from medical school, completed his internship and residency. From 1983 to 1985, he joined Kathy in the pediatrics practice, their own job-sharing arrangement, unique for the time. In the mid 1980s, Shaffer secured a two-year fellowship in neonatology at Children's Mercy Hospital; he stayed on through 1991, when he moved full time to St. Luke's.

In the early 1980s, Shaffer realized with some shock that here he was a practicing pediatrician, yet he lacked first-hand experience in witnessing childhood diseases that had been eradicated in the U.S., diseases like polio, measles and typhoid fever.

The solution Shaffer chose to correct that gap in knowledge was a turning point, in his life and in the fortunes of hundreds of impoverished mothers and babies in Haiti. One could say that he owes his inspiration for that solution to Dr. Dimond and the UMKC School of Medicine.

“Dr. Dimond was committed to taking students to various parts of the world to see and experience first hand the health care delivery systems of other countries,” said Shaffer.. The first trip he and Kathy took was to Israel. Deeply impressed, Shaffer decided another exposure to a different culture, vastly different than the U.S., might be the answer to the knowledge he needed about childhood diseases. 

A brief exposure, perhaps a few weeks, was all that would be necessary, he thought. He considered Africa, but it was too far away from Kathy and his two young children. Instead, he chose Haiti. Much closer, it had all the conditions he needed to see.

What might have remained a brief diversion from the medical routine back home for most people became something quite different for Shaffer. The stark poverty he witnessed saddened him, repulsed him, and mystically drew him in. 

"I was captured by the suffering of the people," said Shaffer. "After you experience something like that, your first reaction is never to go back because it hurts too much. But then you find that you can't not go back because you can't leave that behind you. You carry it with you after you've seen it. I shared what I had seen with friends at church (St. Andrews Episcopal Church just south of Brookside)."

The experience of Haiti, in combination with the heart, soul and medical acumen that was uniquely Dr. Shaffer, began to stir and foment. This was definitely a magical formula. Shaffer took first one friend, then another along with him to Haiti. He shared his observations with other people and churches and soon, what began as a brief encounter with tropical poverty was a mission to which hundreds of individuals were dedicated. The old maxim that every change in the world begins with one person rang true.

"Within five years, we had 12 churches in Kansas City all partnering with villages in Haiti. Building schools and providing for community development, the beginnings of a community-based health care system. It just multiplied. All I wanted to do was keep going back and as I met people, they said, I can go with you. I said sure, and it changed a lot of lives," said Shaffer. "We counted a few years ago and we had six hundred people who had gone to Haiti with us in various groups. We formed an organization called Haitian Episcopal Learning Partnerships (HELP) to give our work some structure and to keep it going. So now there are five or six trips a year to go to Haiti with Kansas City folks." 

HELP provides primary schools, community health programs, economic development projects and, most recently, the first community college in Haiti.

The mission that Shaffer began has created a world that is like life-giving water in the tropical heat, but this is no mirage. Introducing colleagues from St. Luke’s to problems of maternal health in Haiti, he brought Haiti a new birthing center; more than 300 babies will be born each year with vastly improved odds. This center, Maison de Naissance, is a program of The Healthy Mothers-Healthy Babies Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit corporation, and welcomes contributions and support.

Shaffer noted that Haiti has about the same number of people as Missouri and Kansas combined, yet there are more deaths of mothers and infants in Haiti each year than in all 50 of the United States. Haiti is a logical place for a neonatologist to work and brings his colleagues, he said.

Shaffer also has been instrumental in the establishment of more than a dozen schools, including one that provides computer and business training. Perhaps the most valuable technology improvement Shaffer has created is life-saving satellite and computer connections between the center’s mid-wives in

Haiti and specialty trained physicians and nurses in Kansas City.

“An electronic medical record and quality improvement tools have been built. Webcams and voice connections allow live interaction. “When a mid-wife has a question about a mom and a baby, she’s in contact with St. Luke’s prenatal center and can get the assistance she needs. We collected data on the impact (of this system) and it really doesn’t cost very much to do something that has really changed the lives of women and children.

“On a global level, the greatest ethical problem confronting healthcare is the challenge of providing access to care. There are so many apparent barriers which separate the most destitute patients from the care that we have the capacity to provide. By moving people and programs to isolated places such as rural Haiti, and by being imaginative with opportunities such as internet technology, we can remove many patients and caretakers from their isolation,” said Shaffer. “We are trying to undermine the so-called ‘barriers’ to provide healthcare access to those who need it most.”

Shaffer’s work has had an impact on other lives too – notably his children. Their trips to Haiti left deep impressions. Son Chris is now in his sixth year of medical school at UMKC. Daughter Brynn is graduating from Boston College and will begin medical school at UMKC in January. The passion of care giving being passed from one generation to the next has a strong sense of flow and trust in a powerful Creator. Shaffer knows this trust and flow. He elected to earn a master’s degree in theology at St. Paul’s Seminary at a time when a busy medical career and raising two young children already seemed to require more than 24 hours in every day. But, to Shaffer, the Magician Physician, this “impossibility” was like any other “impossibility” in life. The only thing to do was to make it disappear.