erena Fitka was born and raised in St. Mary’s, a small town on the Yukon River with a population of 600. Subsistence fishing is a way of life in St. Mary’s, and these last few years have been ghostly, according to Fitka, who is the executive director of the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association (YRDFA).

“It was eerie,” Fitka says. “Usually you see people passing by and you’re waving to them. And when you pass the fish camp, the smell of the smoke house going. You didn’t see the boats or the people at fish camp… It was a very empty, very deserted feeling on the river that first year.”

Almost all the king and chum salmon subsistence fisheries on the Yukon River were closed these past four years because of low returns. This year, there were small subsistence chum fisheries in the summer and fall, but only in a few places on the Yukon River. Between the closures, gear requirements, and the cost of gas, just a fraction of the population could fish, Holly Carroll says. Carroll is the Yukon River federal subsistence fisheries manager for the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

laska’s largest philanthropic organization, the Rasmuson Foundation, announced $550,000 worth of grants to thirty-six artists across Alaska in September. The awards, and the recognition that comes with them, are coveted in the relatively small art world of Alaska.

“I’ve been applying for the Rasmuson grant since my business started in 2015; I just haven’t been able to find an ‘in’ with it,” says Nikki Corbett, who sews and travels around the state teaching qaspeq sewing classes. “I was really surprised that we got it. It’s really exciting that it’s going to finally come to fruition.”

The Individual Artist Awards—unusual in the fact that they are awarded to individuals instead of nonprofit or tribal entities—come in the form of $10,000 project awards, $25,000 fellowship awards, and a single $50,000 Distinguished Artist award. A jury of art professionals from outside Alaska make the award selections.

pollo doesn’t hold much sway in the modern medical profession, despite the Greek god’s prominence in the Healer’s Oath. Rather than swear to Apollo (and Asclepius, Panacea, and Hygieia), physicians abide by a code of ethics. This adherence is what makes medicine a profession, in the classical sense.

Earlier this year, Alaska Business debuted a directory for the ethically bound profession of law, the Legal Elite, and this month’s special section introduces the medical counterpart: Top Docs. Out of the broader healthcare workforce, this directory focuses on those whom Hippocrates would’ve recognized as trained and sworn physicians; moreover, it honors the best of the best, as nominated by their peers.

Some specialists in the field share their expertise with articles in this section about “The Business of Nursing” and the nonprofit Health TIE, which stands for “Testbed for Innovative Enterprises.” A relatively new program from the Alaska Department of Health gets the spotlight in “Medicare Ambassadors.” And “Interior Medicine” visits Fairbanks to check in with community hospital operator Foundation Health Partners.

Finally, “People & Patients, Facts & Figures” explores how healthcare providers collect and use data. Flip to this month’s Alaska Trends for a display of births, deaths, and other demographic data from the Alaska Vital Statistics 2022 Annual Report. As it shows, everyone crosses paths with the healthcare system at least twice, coming and going.

ccording to the International Council of Nurses, the field of nursing “encompasses [the] autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups, and communities, sick or well and in all settings.” You can find nursing professionals staffing the front lines of all levels of care providing illness prevention and health promotion. They also take part in research, advocacy, policy making, education, and management within the healthcare industry.

The title “nurse” refers to someone who holds particular qualifications and has demonstrated necessary competency, but it actually describes a whole alphabet soup of different levels of care and training, including CNA, LPN, AAS, ADN, BSN, RN, MSN, APRN, NP, DNP, and PhD. One way to think about nurses is by three general categories: non-degree, degree, and advanced degree. Non-degreed nurses include certified nursing assistants (CNA) and licensed practical nurses (LPN), which complete nursing education programs that may conclude with a diploma or certificate but generally not a university degree. Degreed nurses include those with an undergraduate degree in the field, such as an Associate of Applied Science in Nursing (AAS), an Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN), or a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN).

ach day, about 10,000 Americans mark their 65th birthdays. As a present, those new senior citizens are entitled to government-backed health insurance through Medicare. With approximately 110,000 Medicare recipients, Alaska has the fewest of any state, yet reaching beneficiaries presents unique challenges. To overcome these challenges, the Alaska Medicare Information Office launched the Ambassador Program, a trusted resource for determining the best Medicare coverage for individual medical needs.

oundation Health Partners provides such a range of healthcare services in Fairbanks and the Interior region that it’s easier to identify procedures outside its wheelhouse.

“We don’t work on open heart surgeries, and we don’t work on brains,” says Dr. Angelique Ramirez, Foundation Health chief medical officer.

Sarah Martin, chief nursing officer for the community hospital operator, clarifies, “We do perform cardiac surgeries. We just don’t perform open heart surgeries.”

aunched officially in January 2020 with seed funding from the Anchor Point Foundation and additional funding from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority and the Mat-Su Health Foundation, Health TIE is an Alaska-based healthcare innovation hub to catalyze solutions through business startups, pilot projects, and bringing changemakers together.

It is important to address Alaska’s high healthcare costs due to the impact they have on Alaska’s economic future. Over the last few decades, economists and consultants have produced a multitude of reports analyzing Alaska’s high healthcare costs, which can be distilled into a simple explanation: Alaska’s large geography and small population make it hard to achieve economies of scale. Comparisons between states show Alaska ranks at the very top for healthcare costs: an average of $9.76 billion annually, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Unfortunately, high healthcare costs have real consequences resulting in missed economic opportunities for Alaskans as well as the overall economy. Concerns about healthcare keep potential entrepreneurs trapped at their day jobs, prevent established businesses from expanding, and discourage startup companies from relocating.

his year marks the first annual publication of the Alaska Business Top Docs, a directory of the best doctors practicing in Alaska as nominated by their peers.

To gather this information, we invited local, licensed doctors to tell us which of their peers they think excel in providing healthcare to Alaskans through an online survey.

The result is approximately 190 doctors who have demonstrated their passion for providing quality healthcare to Alaskans. This list is not intended as a directory of doctors that are currently taking patients, though many undoubtedly are. It is instead a way to highlight excellence and celebrate healthcare providers in Alaska.

aint Nicholas of Myra, the 4th century Christian bishop, is the namesake of two vastly different characters in modern mythology. One, of course, is Santa Claus. The other, either by contrast with the gift-giving spirit or by association with midwinter partying, is “Old Nick,” another name for the Devil.

Among miners and metallurgists in Europe, Old Nick was blamed for tricking them by tainting copper ores with a less useful metal called Devil’s copper, or kupfernickel. After further study revealed it wasn’t copper at all, the element’s name was shortened to “nickel.”

The perceived value of nickel has evolved: today the US Geological Survey includes nickel on its list of fifty minerals critical to the country’s economy and national security.

he Arctic Coast, frozen for most of the year, is alarmingly fluid. Beaches and bluffs along the Arctic Ocean shore have some of the highest rates of erosion in the country, according to a US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) report.

In August, the USACE–Alaska District signed a project partnership agreement with the North Slope Borough for the Barrow Coastal Erosion Protection Project.

As the name suggests, the project predates Alaska’s northernmost town adopting its indigenous name in 2016. Fighting erosion goes back to the ‘90s. Before the effect of global climate change was clearly understood, bluffs along the shore of Utqiaġvik were already slumping, exposing ancestral remains and artifacts.

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