Alumni Profile: Steve Kagen, MD '76

The route from the allergy clinic to the former office of John F. Kennedy in the U.S. Capitol building is far from common, but one University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health professor who knows Representative Steve Kagen, MD '76, wasn't a bit surprised by the journey his friend took.

 

Kagen, an allergist by training, was elected a congressman in 2006.

 

"Certainly, when we were in college, he wanted to be a physician, but he also talked about running for political office," says Paul Sondel, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics, human oncology and medical genetics at the School of Medicine and Public Health.

 

Sondel has known Kagen longer than almost anyone. The two met at age 11 when they were campers at Camp Manitowish in Boulder Junction, Wisconsin. (If prompted, both can still sing the camp song.)

 

Steve Kagen was elected to the U.S. Congress in 2006.

"Steve was an incredible camper and athlete, the kind of guy who wouldn't let a brick wall stop him," says Sondel, who recalls Kagen being able to flip a canoe onto his back and portage at an impressively early age.

 

The two spent three summers meeting up at camp (Sondel was from Fox Point, Kagen from Appleton) and then didn't see one another again until they discovered they were both undergraduates in the same pre-med classes at UW-Madison in 1968.

 

The camp friends wound up being college roommates during those turbulent Vietnam-era years. They lived just a few blocks away from Sterling Hall when it was bombed by anti-war protesters in 1970. Kagen recalls Sondel running down the street to see if there were survivors who needed help.

 

"We had some interesting discussions during those years," Kagen recalls. "We were non-violent revolutionaries, very much opposed to our country's involvement in Vietnam."

 

But it wasn't all politics. Kagen was a speed skater at a time when Madison speed skaters were capturing Olympic gold. Kagen says he can claim that he trained with multiple medal winner Eric Heiden, although he says it's more accurate to say, "I can tell you what Eric Heiden looks like from behind."

 

Dicke, Middleton were Influences

 

Kagen says his medical school years were most influenced by pulmonologist Helen Dicke, MD '37, and by former medical school dean William S. Middleton, MD, who was his advisor. Kagen remembers one day, when he was particularly tired from speed skating, Middleton caught him yawning during a lesson at the veterans hospital.

 

"He said to me, 'Dr. Kagen, you're going to have to decide what kind of a doctor you're going to be before you see any of my patients,'" Kagen recalls. "'There are doctors with no spine, doctors with a spine of clay and doctors with a spine of steel.'"

 

From Wisconsin, Kagen went to Northwestern University Medical School and the Medical College of Wisconsin for training, and then moved home to Appleton, where he eventually founded a chain of allergy clinics.

 

He published more than 60 research papers, one of which tied seasonal outbreaks of asthma and allergies in the Fox River Valley to the hatching of local insects known as lake flies on Lake Winnebago. A paper he published on the connection marked the first time anyone had sequenced and cloned the gene for the allergen.

 

Even for people without allergies, Kagen was a familiar name in the area, as his Fox Valley clinics sponsored the nightly "pollen report" during the television newscast and he created the "Allergy Arcade" at the Fox Cities Children's Museum.

 

Parents Set an Example of Public Service

 

Kagen's parents had instilled a sense of public service into their children. His father, Marv, an Appleton dermatologist, ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress in the 1960s. And what Kagen saw as a physician made him want to change things. He was distressed that some of his patients with serious asthma and allergies would forgo drugs and treatments they couldn't afford.

 

"Ultimately, it was the fact that government was not helping my patients," Kagen says. "I heard the same stories every doctor hears."

 

While Kagen had decided back when he was an undergraduate that one day he would run for Congress, convincing his wife, Gayle, that the time was right took a few years. Finally, in 2006, she agreed that their children were old enough.

 

Kagen financed his race himself, spending nearly $2 million, and defeated Wisconsin Assembly Speaker John Gard in the most expensive congressional race in Wisconsin history. The U.S House of Representatives ethics committee later ruled that Kagen would have to sell his clinical practice.

 

Optimistic About Health Care Reform

 

Kagen ran on an affordable health care platform he called "No Patient Left Behind." One key component included open disclosure of pricing.

 

"Your medical care should be like when you walk into a restraurant and order coffee - you know up front what you'll be charged," he says.

 

His plan also called for a single price structure for everyone's drugs and services, and a single insurance pool that would not turn anyone away for pre-existing conditions.

 

Although Kagen and President Obama are in agreement on the issues, selling the ideas to the American public has proved to be more contentious. Kagen faced the brunt of the "town hall backlash" last August after protesters opposed to government-run health care heckled him at a town hall meeting in Green Bay. But he remains an optimist.

 

"We're listening to everybody, but we're going to get the job done," Kagen says. "I'm very pleased the president has linked civil rights to health care. You shouldn't be discriminated against due to the way you were born."

 

Kagen wants his School of Medicine and Public Health classmates to engage in the national debate.

 

"If anyone in my class believes they're going to retire, they're not. It's called reoccupation," he says. "I urge them to get involved in the political process. It should be doctors and nurses who decide who lives and who dies, not politicians."

 

By Susan Lampert Smith

This article appears in the fall 2009 issue of Quarterly.

Date Published: 11/11/2009