Cenon Alfonso, visionary
It’s easy to mistake Dr. Cenon R. Alfonso for a true blue Atenean when you hear how he talks about Ignatian pedagogy and how he raves about the founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius de Loyola. In truth, he’s been a Thomasian since 1981, though he shares that he’s always “protruded” there.
"That's my life story! The maverick in me did not seem to be so aligned with the aged practices and structures of a bastion of tradition despite good academic performance. I was always reported. Sawang-sawa na ‘yung university authorities of my change-driven leadership, eh! Hindi lang nila ako maalis because we delivered naman. (The University authorities were so sick of my change-driven leadership. But they could not remove me because we delivered.)
“The changes perhaps that we were introducing may have come too fast!” he added.
Alfonso's term begins on 1 June 2019.
In 2007, then-Associate Dean for Administration Dr. Marife Yap invited him to sit in a freshman class—the pioneer batch of the med school—taught by Dr. Lou Querubin. He was hesitant at first. “I told them I’ve been teaching for years and I don’t see a change. I don’t think I’ll make a change there. I won’t be able to introduce anything new,” he says. But Dr. Alfredo Bengzon, the founding Dean of the ASMPH, was insistent. “Just sit in and observe,” he said. “Observe what this school is all about.”
And so he did.
It was love at first sight. “When I sat down, I thought, ‘This is different. This is the school I was looking for! I never had this experience,’” Alfonso shares. His first act of business after being invited to the ASMPH was to buy a book on St. Ignatius. He fell deeply in love with the culture of Ateneo, especially Ignatian spirituality. To him, it is such a breath of fresh air coming from an environment that he describes as “very rigid and highly structured.”
Twelve years later, he still remains invested in ASMPH, if not more so.
“I don’t like to commit until I get to know enough about it,” he explains, “but once I get to know enough and I seem to like and love it, I commit totally.” It is this commitment that has led him to take the helm of the medical school and steer it to greater heights.
A change of mindset and leading health governance
As a super-specialist (he’s a Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary surgeon, performing the most difficult and intricate surgeries in abdomen), Alfonso will be the first one to tell you that global health is in a state of disarray and fragmentation. “Health experts have actually reneged on their leadership roles by default,” he says.
Borrowing words from John Kotter, the Father of Modern Change Management, Alfonso shares that what he had experienced upon entering the ASMPH was a “change of mindset.” And he hopes to change people’s mindsets, as well, beginning with small things like what healthcare really is. “Most of the time we think of health care as sick care. Governments,” he says, “have the responsibility to keep their constituents free from sickness.”
Alfonso also brings up the issue of space. As Ateneo’s medical school continues to grow, so does the need for classrooms, as well as state-of-the-art equipment and facilities such as simulation classrooms. He admits that medical schools in the Philippines lag behind other schools in the region, such as Vietnam and Malaysia. How once, they had been looking up to us for guidance, and now that position is reversed.
“We can’t move on in ASMPH as a very small and exclusive club.” The school started with a batch made up of 63 students; today, their population has grown to 900. “ASMPH is not the physical structure. This is just an introduction. The next ten years is the better school. That’s the real school. The school of hardknocks.”
Health Governance is the chosen flagship project of the Ateneo Professional Schools (APS) under the Board's long-term plan dubbed AMDG 2030. As incoming Dean of the ASMPH, Alfonso joins incoming VP John Paul Vergara as well as the other Deans of the Ateneo Professional Schools to attain that particular goal. It has 3 strategic foci: health financing, equity in access to health care and equity in quality of health care.
It was unclear at first, he admits. How do four different schools find common ground in the arena of health governance? For the ASMPH, it was obvious. But how about Law, Business or Government? What role do the other schools play? In this workshop, he—as well as other Professional Schools administrators—have learned that all of them do, in fact, play a part in their mission of health governance.
Alfonso recalls a conversation he once had with former President of the Ateneo de Manila University, Fr. Bienvenido F. Nebres, SJ where the latter called ASMPH as “more than just a med school.” These words struck Alfonso and until today he continues to operate under that idea. He’s taken the school’s three-pronged vision to heart and he’s run with it.
Being a Thomasian in a sea of blue has not always been easy. Alfonso admits that he has received threats and a fair amount of criticism because he left España for Ortigas; donned blue instead of yellow. But he wouldn’t look back, he says candidly. "If that's the way you want it stated, I wouldn’t go back to where I was— not because I hate anyone in my past but because I firmly believe that this is God’s calling of love and service.”
“And truly, I love it and I am extremely grateful for it,” he says.
At the end of the day, Alfonso unwinds with a good book—these days, he’s into Jesus: A Pilgrimage by Fr. James Martin SJ—and a lively dinner with his family. After all, he’s been up since around 4:30 am, starting his day with a run. Other days, he swims. He eats breakfast at 5, and two hours later, he’ll be in a board meeting, head to ASMPH, or conduct surgery, so that dinner is invaluable and precious time for Cenon Alfonso—Dean, doctor, and family man.
