When the doctor is the patient A kidney transplant and a cancer diagnosis helped shape the career of infection-control expert Steve Pergam March 23, 2015 • By Mary Engel / Fred Hutch News Service As director of infection control at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and an infectious disease researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Dr. Steve Pergam works to protect a subset of people who are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases: cancer patients. Here he is shown with graduate research assistant Arianna Miles-Jay. Photo by Bo Jungmayer / Fred Hutch News Service As a first-year medical student at University of Nebraska Medical Center, Dr. Steve Pergam volunteered for a vaccine campaign in Nicaragua, bringing basic childhood immunizations to squatters living in cardboard shacks. When he returned to Nicaragua the following spring to deliver a second round of immunizations, he found that local health care workers had already done so. His earlier efforts had helped put the impoverished community on the government’s radar.