Full-circle care: From children to centenarians

Katherine “Kate” Galluzzi, DO, and her daughter Claire Bogan, DO, have the human lifespan pretty much covered. While Kate spends her days navigating the complexities of geriatric medicine, Claire is on the frontlines of adolescent psychiatry, helping kids find their footing in an increasingly unstable world.

It’s full circle care with a nontraditional origin story. The pair’s paths to DO degrees made plenty of detours before a few “lightbulb” moments changed everything.

A life-changing suggestion

Kate remembers the exact moment she knew her daughter would become a physician, even if Claire’s memory of it is a bit hazy. At the time, Claire already knew her passion was working with children in underserved communities and was considering pursuing a PhD in psychology. But then one of Kate’s colleagues made a suggestion: why not go to medical school and become a psychiatrist instead?

“I remember looking at Claire, and it was like a lightbulb had gone off,” Kate recalled. “For me, it was stunning. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

That single moment would shape Claire’s future.

“After I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do, I was able to visualize myself as a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Knowing the impact of the work I could do within the community, I knew that was where I wanted to be. I never looked back after that,” Claire said.

Running from (and back to) medicine

While Claire’s pivot was clear, Kate’s path zigzagged; she initially ran from a career in medicine. Growing up as a self-described “service brat,” Kate saw the grueling demands of medicine firsthand. Her father, Nicholas Galluzzi, MD, spent his career in the United States Public Health Service, and Kate was certain she didn’t want to follow in his footsteps.

After dropping out of Goucher College, Kate bought a farm in West Virginia and lived on a commune in Maryland for some time. She fully embraced her new hippie lifestyle: homesteading, living off the grid and wearing overalls with braids down to her waist.

Her return to medicine was inspired by a chance encounter with a group of polo-shirt-and-khaki clad young men who looked decidedly out of place in Lewisburg. When Kate asked what brought them there, they explained they were students at the medical school. Kate had no idea the school existed.

The combination of that conversation plus a friend asking her what she was going to do with her brain made things begin to percolate for Kate.

A second chance

“I thought, I can live in this beautiful place, go to medical school and maybe spend my life here. It was sort of an ‘aha’ moment, like the one I described with Claire,” she says. “Those moments are life-changing. I’ve never looked back either.”

Kate applied to only one school, the newly established West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine (WVSOM). In 1984, she graduated with her DO degree.

While Kate’s path into osteopathic medicine felt like fate, Claire’s journey was a natural choice. By the time she applied to the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM) at 24, Claire already had a deep level of comfort and familiarity with the osteopathic medical community.

“Growing up with my mom and seeing her career unfold, seeing all the amazing work she was able to do, it felt like she could do anything. There was nothing that she couldn’t do,” Claire said. “Osteopathic medicine just felt like a natural transition for me.”

On the frontlines

Claire currently works as an integrated child psychiatrist at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) as well as a family medicine residency program in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Claire, who recently became a mother herself, centers her work around children and adolescents who are facing challenging psychosocial and family issues as well as severe, chronic mental illnesses.

“That excellent osteopathic education focused on primary care and treating the whole person comes up every single day,” Claire said. “Osteopathic medicine has been the best path for me.”

Claire knew early on that she wanted to specialize in psychiatry.

Kate chose her specialty a bit later into her training. She thought she’d pursue internal medicine like her dad, but extended time spent in the ICU changed that.

“I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life keeping people alive until the next shift came on,” Kate said. “When family medicine began to emerge as a specialty, I was intrigued.”

Working with a team of dedicated nurse practitioners inspired Kate to pursue geriatrics. She also cites her strong, positive relationship with her grandmother Concetta as a driving force in that decision: “I thank her for my career,” Kate said. “People say, ‘Why are you doing geriatrics? That’s so depressing.’ But I think of it as just the opposite. It’s edifying to work with older people.”

Advocating for equity

Both women recognize how family legacy provided inspiration for their career paths, but both are dedicated to helping individuals from different backgrounds access medical education.

“People from different walks of life are not always welcomed or given access to the field. It’s important to find ways to encourage the health systems we work in to diversify paths toward medicine,” Claire emphasizes.

For Claire, that means continuing the literacy and access programming she began in college. For Kate, it’s using her seat on the PCOM admissions committee to advocate for first-generation students: “Patients deserve to talk to someone who looks like them, speaks like them, comes from their neighborhood,” Kate said.

That shared passion for advocacy has become the heartbeat of their patient care.

“I want to instill hope in my patients,” Claire said. “I want to leave them with a sense that they can have a positive future, but the work can’t end there. We must stay involved in public policy.”

For Kate, the work is less about “fixing” and more about walking alongside her patients: “I hold myself in regard as my patients’ teacher. I’m not trying to fix them, but I want to hold their hand and help them on their journey,” she said.

A guiding philosophy

On her wall, Kate keeps a quote by Hippocrates that bridges her mission with Claire’s: “The greatest medicine of all is teaching people how not to need it.”

 “Teaching people from a young age how to take care of their bodies ties in with the advocacy piece. If you care for your body, you might be able to live in it for a century,” Kate said.

It’s a philosophy that works: one of Kate’s patients recently celebrated her 114th birthday, the ultimate proof that the goal is to help people live well, regardless of which end of the lifespan they are in.

“We have to work together to get there,” Kate said. “And the osteopathic philosophy is uniquely positioned to carry that message forward.”

Other stories in this series:

Lessons from mom: Why personal connection is a physician’s best tool

In Kirksville, Missouri, a milestone in motherhood and medicine

No glamour, all heart: Why this surgeon-mom is proud her daughter chose the same path