Justin F. Klamerus, M.D., is the new medical director of the new collaborative cancer program between Northern Michigan Regional Hospital (NMRH) and Otsego Memorial Hospital (OMH) in Gaylord.
The 33-year-old Klamerus grew up on Drummond Island, across the St. Marys River from Detour in the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
He said he knew he wanted to be a physician from the time he was in grade school, and volunteered as a young teen for the local doctor, Scott Aldridge.
“Scott was a new M.D. just out of his residency, and I was 14 when I started volunteering for him at his clinic,” explained Klamerus. “It felt gratifying in just watching what he was doing and how he was helping people. And from then on I knew that’s what I would do, and I never looked back.”
After graduating from Detour High School, Klamerus received his medical education at Olivet College, Michigan State and Ohio State. He completed his fellowship training in medical oncology at the Sidney Kimmell Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.
Klamerus decided on oncology, the treatment of cancer, “because patients, through no fault of their own, got something, and that something they got was just horrible. And it was a life changing experience for them and for their families.”
He added, “it was a powerful group of patients to work with.”
He chose to focus on treating lung cancer which, as he put it, "unfortunately, 85 percent of those patients behave themselves into that disease."
Last December, Klamerus was invited to speak at Johannesburg-Lewiston High School, along with one of his patients, an elementary school principal. They spoke to the crowd gathered for the junior varsity and varsity basketball games and the "Rally for a Cure."
All players, both the Johannesburg and Gaylord St. Marys teams, played in memory or honor of someone who was diagnosed with or had died from cancer.
Klamerus was amazed at the outpouring of support, noting that several hundred people came to listen and join the rally.
“It was very gratifying to see some of the local cancer program patients that are actively under treatment there," he said, adding, "I spoke about stopping smoking and about the cancers we don’t have ribbons for — such as lung cancer.”
Klamerus said he had considered remaining at the large research environment of Johns Hopkins University Hospital School of Medicine, doing research and writing. Instead he decided to return to Northern Michigan where his family lives, to take care of patients who need his help.
So how does he compare the hospital rated No. 1 in the country the past few years (Johns Hopkins), a facility that takes up eight city blocks, with Northern Michigan Regional Hospital? "Very favorably," he said.
One of the fascinating things Klamerus found when interviewing for the position here was that, "the things I thought made Johns Hopkins great — the guidelines determining care, evidence based practices, and things of that nature — were just as prevalent here and they have just as passionate people working on them. It’s just that the staff at NMRH is smaller. When you consider the personalized medicine and the understanding of your particular challenge with your disease, I think you receive better care here than at Johns Hopkins University.”   
Within the service area of the NMRH-OMH collaborative cancer program, Emmet County has a lower instance of cancer, while Gaylord and Otsego County has one of the highest rates in the region.
Why the difference? Klamerus answered, “If you look at risk factor behaviors, there is a higher proportion of people who smoke and greater rates of obesity and probably less cancer screening in Otsego County."
Klamerus hopes to change the risk factors with the new program. While smoking rates have gone down for men over the past decade, they have gone up for women in that time.  
When he spoke at Johannesburg, Klamerus pointed out that younger people are the fastest growing number of smokers. With all the public education, why are the numbers climbing?
"The answer," said Klamerus, "is because it’s cool to smoke and when you are 18, you are invincible. "
“Lung disease is a bad disease for many reasons” Klamerus explained. "Because there is a lack of warning signs that something is wrong until it’s too late. More than 75 percent of patients that are diagnosed with cancer of the lung are in advanced stages. More people die from lung cancer in the United States than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined.”
Each year about 220,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with lung cancer and 190,000 with the disease will die. That is why Klamerus said he will be working on the education of Northern Michigan residents, especially those in counties where the incidence of cancer is high, to convince them to stop smoking and make healthier eating choices to reduce the risk of cancer.
Dr. Justin Klamerus has co-authored a paperback book titled a “Patients’ Guide to Lung Cancer” that will be in book stores in early March. It’s part of a series of books on cancers published by Johns Hopkins Medicine, with the profits going to cancer research.
Klamerus said the idea for the book is “to take and summarize what a patient, their family and their love ones may experience — the totality of information and the prospective they get — from diagnosis, testing, treatment and the outcome, be it cured, remission or end of life.
"The goal," said Klamerus, “is to at least take away some of the fear and replace it with understanding.”