Lucas grew up in the Midwest and spent his early career working as a firefighter and EMT in the Mountain West and Alaska, where he discovered a love for the crossroads of health care and social science. He went on to study clinical psychology at Seattle University before returning to Kotzebue to found Maniilaq Social Medicine and Siamit in 2016. Since then, Lucas and the Siamit family have worked to build a model for tribal health partnerships around the principles of Indigenous leadership, social medicine, and clinical excellence. For this work, Lucas was named a Young Leader in Primary Care by the World Health Organization. In his free time, Lucas likes to roast coffee, read fiction, and skijor with his dog, Casimir.

Lucas has led programs in primary care, social medicine, psychiatry and addiction medicine, public health, and emergency medicine. Before Alaska, he worked as an EMT, psychotherapist, and hasty team member for a county search and rescue service. For clinical excellence in rural emergency medical services, Lucas was named Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine in 2018.

Lucas is principal investigator at Siamit Lab, a research program focused on building academic-community teams to map and address the social determinants of health in rural Alaska. His current projects include SRx, a Harvard Medical School study examining the health impacts of subsistence practice; the Rural Reproductive Health Project, a mixed-methods study and quality improvement initiative with the University of Washington; and Culture of Care, the evaluation program for the care model Sayaqagvik in Northwest Alaska.

Siamit in Nature

Achieving rural health equity requires patients, health workers, family caregivers, and researchers to work together to translate new knowledge into health systems and clinical care. Siamit faculty Lucas Trout, Margaret Smith, Linda Joule, and Stuart Harris describe an academic-tribal health partnership to advance this model in Nature.

Rural reproductive health

A Siamit study with the University of Washington finds that centering Iñupiaq values, strengthening patient-provider relationships, and investing in community-based social supports can contribute to improved reproductive health outcomes among rural Alaska Native women. A paper in Contraception explores the social, geographic, and health system contexts shaping reproductive health in Northwest Alaska.

Siamit in Academic Medicine

American Indians and Alaska Natives have long held state-conferred health rights, but health care disparities persist. This innovation report in Academic Medicine shares the partnership model developed by teams at Harvard, Mass General Brigham, and Maniilaq Social Medicine to advance a health equity agenda in Northwest Alaska.

Covid-19 requires a social medicine response

Covid-19 is an inherently social disease, with exposure, illness, care, and outcomes stratified along familiar social, economic, and racial lines. These disparities charge policy leaders to shape a response grounded in social medicine. Siamit partners Lucas Trout and Arthur Kleinman write in Frontiers in Sociology.

Realizing Indigenous health rights

New approaches to primary care are on the rise. One tribal health system is working toward health equity by addressing the social determinants of health in primary care settings. Siamit partners Lucas Trout, Corina Kramer, and Lois Fischer write in Health and Human Rights.

From rural Alaska to global primary care

Siamit managing partner Lucas Trout describes three care innovations in the Alaska Tribal Health System with broad implications for global primary care. Read more in the World Health Organization’s Young Leaders Blog.

Health technologies in the North

Health communications technologies have played a big role in changing arctic lives, lands, and cultures. A Northern Public Affairs story from Siamit partners Lucas Trout, Arthur Kleinman, Tanya Kirk, and Mark Erickson about just how much the the internet matters.

Suicide, social medicine, and the purview of care

Rural Alaska health health workers seek footing to redress a suicide crisis that many ascribe to colonialism itself. In the end, a single question: What is care, anyways? An ethnography in Health and Human Rights.

Teaching social medicine

Siamit is working to move social medicine education beyond the preclinical curriculum and into rural hospitals and clinics across the country. This paper in Social Medicine shares the education model used by partners at Siamit, Maniilaq, Harvard, and MGH.

Decoloniality as an ethics of care

What happens when community members, health workers, and researchers partner to develop suicide prevention tools grounded in an ethics of decoloniality. Wexler, Barnett, Trout, and Moto write in Northern Public Affairs.