Home / Blog / The Long-Term Impact of Addressing Local Needs

The Long-Term Impact of Addressing Local Needs

Last month, NPR’s Goats & Soda blog discussed programs offering short-term experiences in global health (STEGH) for medical students, highlighting “The Risks (And Unexpected Benefits) Of Sending Health Students Abroad.” The post discussed the challenges of ensuring that global health programs “focus on what will benefit the local community, not how much the experience may mean (and often does mean) to the medical trainees.” In order to best serve local communities, the article concluded, program goals “should be long-term, both established and maintainable for the future by the community itself.”

Bedside Training Anesthesia VietnamAt HVO, our work is guided by the principles of sustainability and long-term impact. We design projects in partnership with collaborating institutions overseas; the needs of these institutions and their patient populations shape the goals of every project, ensuring that each project delivers knowledge, skills and professional opportunities that will empower local health workers and build local capacity. HVO projects provide health care staff in resource-scarce countries with knowledge and skills that will build the resiliency of their health systems and address the needs of their patient populations in the face of growing and changing health care challenges.

Lena Dohlman, MD, MPH – an HVO volunteer for nearly twenty years – observed the impact of decades of collaboration following her most recent trip to HVO’s anesthesia project at the Hospital for Traumatology and Orthopaedics (HTO) in Vietnam:

It was immensely gratifying to come back to HTO after many years and see all the positive changes that have occurred. I repeatedly heard about how they learned how to perform some procedure from a previous volunteer (they remember the names) and the standards of care have significantly improved. When we spend just a short time at a site it is hard to imagine the impact we may have. Improvement is a slow process anywhere but after almost 20 years of returning to the same site I am convinced that HVO makes a difference.”

By remaining focused on local needs and targeting long-term, sustainable goals, volunteers to HVO’s anesthesia project in Vietnam have made a considerable improvement in the quality and availability of care. Their work is leading to safer surgical care, and their impact will be felt for years to come.

There are many ways you can contribute to HVO’s long-term impact. Volunteer to teach and train at an HVO site, become a member of our global health community, or donate to support our capacity-building efforts.