Center for Global Initiatives, Inc.

Conceptually, we see the problem we address as healthcare services, sciences, systems, education, and research all suffer from disconnections — globally and locally, biologically and behaviorally, training and practice. Health inequities are global in scale; however it is the Center's philosophy to successfully address these injustices through multiple, smaller scale projects, with a coordinated focus and outcome accountability.

Until now, there has not been a truly integrated Center that is at once mindful of all the complex aspects of global health inequities while also focused on small, outcomes oriented projects that are agile, responsive, and empowering in clinical, training, and research domains. It is the goal of the Center to "To change the world, one patient at a time." We tend to work in places where if we were not operating, there would be no services.

Generally we do this by:
1. Serving as an incubator for new initiatives that creatively solve health care inequities throughout the world.
2. Acting as a collaborator with individuals and organizations in developing and launching projects that address the needs of medically impoverished populations.
3. Functioning as a facilitator in directing public and private resources towards programs aimed at improving health.
4. Working as an educator to provide new information and tools to empower others.

The Most Unique Aspects of the Center
1. We serve as a "hothouse" for new projects. We help to nurture, grow, and launch them until self sustaining.
2. After a project has taken hold, we will continue to serve as pro bono consultants as long as necessary, along with fulfilling any other needs—materials, medicines, case consultation, introductions...
3. 95% of our projects are the result of being invited to do the work. When we are not a good fit, we recommend a more suitable organization.
4. As best we can, depending on the project, we seek to blend primary care, behavioral health and public health into an ultimately self-sustaining, outcomes accountable, culturally consonant result.

It's easy to want to measure success via the number of zeroes and commas in a bank account or total square footage of mansions/villas owned, or the number of Italian sports cars in the garage or polo ponies in the stable. But in my line of work, the bottom line numbers I equate with success are the number of lives saved and/or changed—and I have found that can be accomplished with a high ROI.

The context for this is through my role as Founding Director of the Center for Global Initiatives. Our mission is to help in the creation of self-sustaining programs that improve access to healthcare in under-served communities throughout the world. We go about this in by various means—serving as an incubator for new initiatives that creatively solve healthcare inequities, acting as a collaborator with individuals and organizations in developing, and launching projects that address the needs of medically impoverished populations, functioning as a facilitator in directing public and private resources toward programs aimed at improving health, and working as an educator to provide new information and tools to empower others.Our first project was working with children in Tanzania who had lost their parents to AIDS. I had never really thought about how, or even if, these children went to school. I learned that they did not. Our in-country colleague believed their chances for a better life were improved if they could read and had knowledge-based skills as well as labor-based training. I agreed and we set forth on creating a modest school.

The “cost" was $8.90 in postage to mail a packet of materials that a group of volunteers from the Center for Global Initiatives compiled for a curriculum and supporting documents. The volunteers were elementary education experts—teachers, principals, developmental experts, etc. Our colleague in Tanzania tweaked the materials to be synthetic and consonant with cultural norms and traditions, and submitted the result to the Ministry of Education who approved it. We continue to be on-call for any help we can give, and always free of charge. We conduct fundraisers for them and are active in fiscally supporting the children in any and all ways under our colleague's watchful and measured stewardship.

We were able to procure the proper medications needed and at follow-up we had been able to treat and thus help prevent over 4,100 people from dying of malaria. Twenty-eight percent of those infected were children under the age of five — an even more vulnerable group. When calculating the cost, it averaged out to... 73 cents a life. That was simply amazing.