From Bethesda Magazine: Healthcare workers on a mission
Montgomery County medical professionals are traveling around the world to provide care, perform surgeries and build lasting connections
By Olivia Yasharoff
August 5, 2026 10:26 a.m.
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“Returning to the same community is one of the most meaningful parts of mission dentistry.” – Dr. John Savukinas.
Sometimes a smile really can be the best medicine. At least that’s what Dr. John Savukinas, a dentist with his own practice in Rockville, subscribes to. For the past three years, Savukinas has been going on annual humanitarian missions to the small Guatemalan city of Antigua with Global Dental Relief, a Denver-based nonprofit.
During his trips to Antigua, Savukinas mostly treats children, filling cavities or extracting teeth. Savukinas, 60, who lives in North Potomac, says he recognizes local staff members each time he returns, and some patients even recognize him.
“Returning to the same community is one of the most meaningful parts of mission dentistry because it shifts the experience from short-term relief to continuity of care,” he says.
During his 2024 mission, Savukinas and his group of 14 other volunteers saw more than 500 patients in just nine days, he says. During his most recent trip this March, he says the team provided the equivalent of $153,665 worth of dental care. A practicing dentist for more than 30 years, Savukinas prioritizes preventive care among young patients abroad, calling it the “foundation” of treatment.
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“You learn a lot in the process about what you’re capable of without all the bells and whistles.”—Dr.Bill Chester
Having been on about 70 missions over the past 41 years, Dr. Bill Chester, 67, tells each doctor who joins him that they will learn as much from their patients abroad as the other way around. “This is not a one-way street,” he says. Many of his team members return from trips “more tame and less arrogant,” he says. “It’s like, wow, look how much you can do without all the things that we do have [in the United States] and depend on, and get really pissed if we don’t have in an operating room. You learn a lot in the process about what you’re capable of without all the bells and whistles, and frankly all the money that we spend here in medicine.”
Chester, who lives in Dickerson, is an anesthesiologist at Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center in Rockville. He has been to more than 15 countries on medical missions, but the one that sticks with him the most is Kenya.
In 1993, Chester read Italian Kenyan author Kuki Gallmann’s book I Dreamed of Africa about the deaths of Gallmann’s husband and son. Chester was immediately moved to write a letter to her, sparking a yearslong friendship. Chester set up the Paul Chester Children’s Hope Foundation in 2004 in memory of his son, who died in a car accident in 2003 at the age of 16. The foundation aims to provide “life-changing surgery for children in need,” according to its website, and its first mission in 2005 was to Kenya. During that trip, Chester and Gallmann worked together on a clinic that was being built. He continues to collaborate on projects in Kenya with Gallmann’s daughter who has two daughters of her own, he says.
“You make such a difference in little things.”—Madeleine Caughey
A mother in Jamaica believed her young son refused to listen to her. It turned out he wasn’t being purposefully disrespectful or rebellious; his ears were filled with wax that hindered his hearing. An ear cleaning by family nurse practitioner Madeleine Caughey, who was on a grassroots trip to the island nation in 2017, and “Voilà, he could hear Mom yelling at him now,” Caughey says.
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Caughey, 66, who grew up in Kensington and lives there now, works in orthopedic oncology at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in D.C. She says going on medical missions makes you feel better about what you do for a living and appreciate what you have.
During a 2019 mission to Ethiopia, Caughey met a man suffering from foot pain. The leather shoes his family recently had bought for him from the United States were causing blisters “all over.” Caughey discovered this was because he never before had worn a full shoe, only sandals. She trimmed his nails, cleaned up his feet and suggested he admire his new shoes from a shelf and not wear them so much.
“You make such a difference in little things,” Caughey says.
She hopes to return to Ethiopia next year, although she says she has concerns about traveling to the East African country. “They’ve had a lot of civil unrest, so it’s just hard,” she says.
“It gives you perspective of the privilege that we have.” —Dr. Aseem Balhara
During previous missions to Thailand and the Dominican Republic, Dr. Aseem Balhara learned the importance of strategic planning. Now 41, he’s preparing to lead his first mission, a fall trip to Peru. Balhara, the medical director for hospital medicine at Adventist HealthCare White Oak Medical Center in Silver Spring, says the upcoming trip has been “a dream” of his.
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Despite his excitement, Balhara is also aware of the controversy surrounding mission trips— including views that they can do more harm than good by focusing on volunteer experience rather than locals’ needs—which he says can beg the question, “Are you really doing it for them or are you doing it for yourself?” Balhara believes in the importance of leveraging the already existing health clinics in the area to establish a good relationship with the community and avoid any animosity.
“Everyone’s well intentioned, but sometimes you do more harm than good, so you have to plan well,” says Balhara, who lives in North Bethesda.
This fall, Balhara and a group from White Oak Medical Center will travel by boat into the upper Amazon jungle, where access to healthcare is limited, to provide primary care, medical education and preventive services to communities in need. He is currently preparing a team of more than 20 doctors, most of whom have never been on a mission trip, for what they might encounter in Peru, including diseases such as malaria, chikungunya and leishmaniasis—things Balhara says you “wouldn’t see within the Bethesda area.”
“You see some things you’ve never seen in your life. The stuff you see in textbooks,” Balhara says. “Those unique experiences stick with you.”
Balhara looks back on his trip to Thailand as an “almost life-altering experience.” He says all 90 children at an orphanage had lice, and a majority had scabies. The clothes and bedding of all the children had to be treated at the same time so they would avoid getting scabies again.
“It gives you perspective of the privilege that we have, the easy life that we live comparatively,” Balhara says.
“We speak the common language, which is helping people.” —Dr. Jason Nellis
Dr. Jason Nellis, a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., and Suburban Hospital in Bethesda—first got involved with community service projects as a student at the University of Maryland. He helped start a group called Terp Corps, promoting homelessness awareness in D.C. In his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, his passion for service led him to do mission work in Nicaragua in 2017, taking care of children with cleft lips and palates, as well as adults who had nasal deformities from having untreated clefts when they were younger.
“Even though we may speak different languages, we speak the common language, which is helping people,” say Nellis, 38, who lives in Bethesda. “I think it’s something that gives meaning to what we do every day.”
Nellis says it’s necessary on medical trips to make the most out of what you have. “In the U.S., we sort of have an infinite supply it almost seems like, but on mission works, you can only use what you bring,” he says.
That’s why Nellis emphasizes the importance of organization: “You know the destination you want to get to, but you gotta make sure that you pack all the supplies to get there and that you’re heading in the right direction. All those things collate to do important work.”
Nellis has arranged missions to Central America and Nepal, but more recently he has gotten involved with the Ukraine Facial Reconstruction Initiative. In collaboration with American and Ukrainian surgeons, the organization created a comprehensive webinar series specializing in craniofacial combat trauma reconstruction to share information with other doctors.
“It’s pretty cool to see this organization has emerged to help these patients not just through surgery, but education,” Nellis says.
This appears in the July/August 2026 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine