New City Man Provides Medical Services On Mission Trips

NEW CITY, NY — A doctor who lives in New City has an impact that's much bigger than his hometown. Dr. Thomas Yuen provides medical services to needy people around the world through mission trips he arranges for his New Jersey church.

For Dr. Yuen, a family medicine physician at Open Door Family Medical Center since 2003, it’s his deep faith that drives his medical work.

Dr. Yuen recently was recognized as the “No Place Too Far” Doctor of Distinction Award recipient by Westfair Communications, publishers of Westchester County Business Journal, The Fairfield County Business Journal and WAG for his work locally and internationally.

“Often it’s more than just giving them medicine, but about praying with them,” says Dr. Yuen, a New City resident, who as mission deacon arranges these trips to underserved countries for his church, Marantha Grace, a Baptist church in Englewood, NJ. “This moral support also gives them healing.”

In one recent trip, it wasn't medicine or healing that he remembers giving. For the 11-year-old boy, it was not about finding a cure for his terminal illness but rather, from a spiritual perspective, affirming with him that his suffering would soon end and that he would find comfort. This is the memory Dr. Yuen has of John, a Romanian youngster he met on a church mission, who was dying from cystic fibrosis.

Accompanying Dr. Yuen and other medical providers on these annual missions with his church – which most recently included a mission to Jamaica with his wife and five children (ages 10 – 18) – are educators and social workers, and teenagers. In recent years, this has included missions to rural areas across Romania, Haiti, Jamaica, and Guatemala.

Dr. Yuen grew up in the Bronx and attended church in Chinatown. Multilingual in English, Spanish, Cantonese, and Toisan, he works alongside local public health nurses to identify and address pressing needs, bring medical supplies and offer health education, treatment, vaccines, and screenings to those individuals in need.

His mission of giving back is further supported by his medical work locally.

For more than 10 years, Dr. Yuen has led Open Door’s medical team in Port Chester — the largest of Open Door’s six medical center sites. Practicing at a Federally Qualified Health Center, Dr. Yuen brings health care to the most under-served individuals and families in Westchester – many of whom face circumstances similar to those abroad — poverty, linguistic isolation, mental health issues, chemical dependency, lack of health insurance, and limited health literacy.

“His passion for serving those in need is guided by his deep faith; his ‘North Star’ is serving through healing,” says Lindsay Farrell, President/CEO of Open Door, which has been providing quality health care to families in Westchester County regardless of their ability to pay, since 1972. “Medicine is his mission.”