International Medical Corps

International Medical Corps is a preeminent first-responder, able to deploy quickly in emergencies — often within 72 hours, anywhere and under any conditions. Our mission is to provide lifesaving services to people affected by natural disasters, disease or conflict. Before, during and after a crisis, we also focus on giving communities the capacity, resources and tools they need to effectively absorb the shock of a disaster or emergency, build resiliency and recover quickly. International Medical Corps focuses on the following areas:

- Building Health Capacity. The organization's focus on strengthening capacity not only fosters self-reliance, but also builds the kind of confidence, pride, and self-esteem essential for successful development and community stability. We build local capacity by training frontline health workers on topics such as infection prevention control across health facilities in line with global best practices.

- Providing Swift and Effective Lifesaving Medical Care with Emergency Preparedness and Response. Because the period immediately following an emergency is critical for saving lives, International Medical Corps' goal is to be on the scene and operational within 72 hours, even in the toughest places.

- Ensuring Women's and Children's Health and Well-being. Women and children are an International Medical Corps priority and a key factor in promoting health, building stable, confident, self-reliant communities, and eradicating global poverty.

- Implementing Mental Health Programs in Emergency Settings, including COVID-19. As leaders in this field, we incorporate mental health into our programs to address the psychosocial needs of disaster survivors and help those with pre-existing mental health conditions.


- Integrating WASH. International Medical Corps focuses on strengthening healthcare service delivery at the facility level by establishing safe water supply, sanitation infrastructure and related services. We also integrate hygiene promotion into all of our WASH projects to enable communities to better protect themselves from the threat of communicable diseases.

- Promoting Nutrition and Food Security. International Medical Corps fights malnutrition through both treatment and prevention programming, with a focus on children under five and pregnant and nursing women.

- Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Treatment in Conflict and Disasters. Existing programs range from primary healthcare screening and counseling for survivors to income-generating initiatives that boost the social status — and protection — of survivors.

In 1984, a simple idea drove International Medical Corps' first relief mission — give local people the tools and knowledge to help themselves and the investment can sustain recovery and development beyond an existing crisis. Today, building the capacity of communities in the midst of an emergency remains the signature component of every International Medical Corps program and in the world's toughest environments. Self-reliance is only possible when lasting solutions are anchored in local culture and environments, affirmed by local decision making, and carried out by people with the knowledge and resources they need to become community assets. About 96% of International Medical Corps' field-based staff and health professionals are recruited from within the local community, to ensure that the gains are passed on and remain in-country long after programs have ended.

The hallmarks of International Medical Corps' programs are:
- Sustainability in programming by ensuring quality, value and excellence in all international and domestic work.
- Care for the communities it supports enshrined in its commitment, responsibility and responsiveness to the needs and priorities of the communities it serves.
- Engagement through improving awareness and access to information, seeking out bold and innovative approaches to difficult and pressing challenges and seizing opportunities for synergy through partnerships and collaboration.
- Transparency as a result of its commitment to the communities it serves, through the establishment of productive working relationships and its pledge to operate openly and inclusively.
- Accountability to the communities where International Medical Corps works, as well as with displaced persons, whether internally to a given country or refugees.
- Global experience harnessed to inform and improve future interventions, applying context-appropriate approaches where applicable, and avoiding pitfalls through lessons learned in previous experiences.

Throughout its global operations, International Medical Corps is committed to the following principles:
- Humanity: addressing human suffering wherever it is found.
- Neutrality: not taking sides in a conflict or engaging in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.
- Impartiality: actions are based on need and the most urgent cases of distress are prioritized, with no distinctions about need on the basis of nationality, race, gender, religious belief, class or political viewpoint.
- Operational Independence: actions are entirely autonomous of any political, economic, military or other objectives of its donors or other actors with an interest in the areas where our work is implemented.

International Medical Corps has responded to emergencies in over 80 countries on six continents, earning the reputation as a fast, reliable First Responder. As needs shift on the ground, we adjust our operations and programmatic focus based on the environment. International Medical Corps prioritizes capacity building through training to ensure that health systems are rebuilt and vulnerable communities become self-reliant. International Medical Corps' Emergency Response Unit is permanently staffed with established emergency response protocols and plans that address the particular human resource, technical, logistics and financial requirements of a rapid response. These include first-responder rosters and pre-positioned medical supplies, communications equipment, technical assessment toolkits and other resources. The Emergency Response Unit draws from a network of pre-trained staff from across the organization who deploy immediately. We recruit volunteer doctors, nurses and other thanks to partnerships with leading medical and public health institutions in the U.S. and an emergency response register of thousands of health professionals. International Medical Corps is also pursuing the World Health Organization’s Type 1 Global Emergency Medical Team Certification, which means that once certified, we will maintain the capacity to immediately deploy a static or mobile health facility that can treat between 50 and 100 patients a day.

International Medical Corps harnesses local knowledge and resources to address context-specific challenges, while also leveraging international best practices through cooperation with humanitarian actors and global agencies. We believe that the efficacy and impact of International Medical Corps’ work are enhanced through collaboration and partnerships with entities sharing similar goals. We place strong emphasis on collective learning and action. We are a member of coalitions and networks critical to the humanitarian field, including InterAction, the International Council of Voluntary Agencies, the Global Health Council, the NGO Leaders Forum convened by the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University and the Society for International Development. We are active within Inter-Agency Standing Committees (IASC), the Global Health, Nutrition, Water/Sanitation/Hygiene and Protection Clusters, the IASC Sub-Working Group on Gender, the IASC Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and the IASC Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support. International Medical Corps also partners with academic institutions – including Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, Johns Hopkins and others. The organization works directly with and through grants from government agencies, including USAID, AusAID, ECHO and DFID, among others, to reach the hardest-hit communities worldwide. International Medical Corps has also forged partnerships with numerous gift-in-kind partners.

International Medical Corps has been a global First Responder to disaster, disease and conflict around the world for 35 years, providing lifesaving relief, health services and training across 80 countries on six continents. In 2019, our teams responded to emergencies and disasters of historic scale, including Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, which left approximately 1.85 million people in need of assistance; Hurricane Dorian, which hovered over The Bahamas for 30 hours before moving on to North Carolina; Typhoon Hagibis in Japan, causing 67,707 acres of flooding; and Typhoon Phanfone, which damaged some 530,000 homes and 32 health facilities in the Philippines. In response, we deployed quickly to meet the needs of those affected by crises related to healthcare; water, sanitation and hygiene; and mental health and psychosocial support, while also training local providers to be their own First Responders. In 2020, we are responding needs of survivors from the earthquakes in Puerto Rico, the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic globally.

Since the coronavirus outbreak began, International Medical Corps has been collaborating closely with coordinating bodies to support response efforts in the US and around the world. In the U.S., we are collaborating with more than 20 hospitals to ensure we are meeting the greatest need in cities and territories in the U.S. like Los Angeles, New York City, Puerto Rico, Chicago, and Detroit. Across the rest of the countries where we operate, we are supporting relief efforts with the provision of supplies, screenings and case management, capacity building, mental health and psychosocial support, and the deployment of an Epidemic Response Team, as needed.