Global Healing

We aim for sustainable development of healthcare services to improve access to care for people in developing countries. We seek to train local health care providers in current best practices in medicine, to enable them to provide appropriate and accessible medical care for children and mothers with life-threatening or potentially life-threatening medical conditions. In the long term we expect the people we train to continue on to train others in their countries so that the skill and knowledge we help them to develop remains and is expanded. In this way we can improve access to health care for larger numbers of patients.

Our programs are organized according to several guiding principles (our values):
1. We collaborate with local partners and medical experts to develop and implement our programs.
2. We create sustainable improvements in patient care by empowering local healthcare professionals to know, do, and teach current best practices.
3. We foster strong partnerships and open communication between our medical volunteers and program participants to support learning during and between training sessions.
4. We measure the impact of our programs both on the skills of our trainees and on the quality of care being provided.
5. We undertake only adequately funded and supported projects that can deliver the highest quality outcome to the people we serve.

Our capabilities are based on three core areas:

1. People: Over 20 years of work we have built an international network of highly skilled volunteer trainers in medicine, nursing, and laboratory medicine. They are staff members at nationally recognized institutions who are united by a strong desire to help others master the skills they have spent a lifetime learning. Many have international reputations in their own fields and choose to spend their time making it possible for patients in other countries to experience the high quality of medical care that they provide at home. All are dedicated to the idea that patients in developing countries can best benefit by having their local health care providers trained to provide medical care according to current best practices. Our volunteers are backed up by 2 dedicated staff members who provide for their needs and ensure that the financial support to the project is used in the most appropriate way. One staff member can support 3 projects so we have the capability to operate 6 projects at a time.

2. Partners: All of our programs depend on our developing country partners being motivated and fully involved in the training that is being provided. We work closely with our partners to determine their needs and ensure we are providing appropriate training for their medical staff. We nurture long term relationships between trainers and students so that they maintain contact between training visits. Ideally we organize observerships at the US home institutions of our trainers so that key people can see first hand how the knowledge they gain is applied. We continue to work to foster close relationships with existing and new partners.

3. Programs: We select our programs very carefully to ensure that we have the best chance to make the impact that we are seeking. In-country partners are carefully selected, and their training needs are thoroughly analyzed, before we commit to a program. We work only with the approval and endorsement of health authorities at the local and national levels to ensure that the improvements we bring are sustained. We select our volunteers with equal care to ensure that they have the required competencies and the ability to build long term relationships with our partners.

In Georgia, we have established a dedicated cardiac hospital that has saved the lives of thousands of children with congenital heart abnormalities. The blood bank we helped establish is providing thousands of units of safe blood. The next phase of this program will be to help establish a pediatric oncology service at the same institution to build on the capabilities that we established and provide care that right now is not available to most children in Georgia.

In Honduras, we have established a free pediatric outpatient clinic that performs thousands of patient visits at no charge. The next phase of his project is to improve the health of children on the island by promoting exclusive breastfeeding of infants to 6 months of age (Honduras has one of the world's lowest rates of exclusive breastfeeding) and improve the quality of infection control care in the island's only public hospital.

In Haiti, we established a blood bank at Hopital Universitaire di Mirebalais with basic component production capability that is providing safe blood products to children and mothers with anemia. The next phase will be to strengthen the transfusion medicine capability at the hospital and to improve the performance of the Haitian Red Cross.

In Vietnam we have trained nurses and doctors in the Emergency Department, Pediatric ICU, and Neonatal ICU at the Vietnam National Childrens' Hospital. the tertiary care pediatric hospital in Hanoi serving a metropolitan are of 8 million. The next phase will be for the trainers we have trained, with support from Global Healing, to begin training doctors and nurses at the 12 satellite hospitals of the VNCH.