Jill Binkley, PT, MSc, CLT traveled to Hanoi, Vietnam in October 2023 to provide physical therapy training to staff at K Hospital. She shared her story with us. The trip was an amazing learning experience for me, and I was…
Drs. Glen Crawford and Suzanne Abkowitz Crawford have been volunteering with HVO’s orthopaedic project in Tanzania since its beginning. They discovered HVO when an HVO volunteer presented a lecture on volunteering and teaching to Dr. Crawford’s senior residency cohort. Both…
Growing up in Cameroon, Viviane Leuche, MD, was inspired by her childhood pediatrician to pursue a career in pediatrics. The African continent’s relatively young population—the estimated median age is 19 years old—offers many opportunities for a pediatrician to make an…
Developing a Fulbright assignment with HVO took a while but, ultimately, the timing of the experience could not have been better. Sihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE, in Cambodia’s capital of Phnom Penh, had an unused ventilator that had been on-site…
A story from our pediatrics project in Bhutan shows how people working toward a common goal can have remarkable results.
"My international volunteer experiences have been life changing and have caused me to recognize that our physical therapy profession has a major contribution to make in furthering global health." - Dr. Janna Beling
Dr. George Meyer gained his first experience practicing medicine internationally as a member of the U.S. Air Force. He served in Thailand, Japan, and Germany. Through these experiences, he and his wife, Lynn Meyer, RN, realized their shared love for…
I’ve shared with you how small changes in behavior can have a significant impact. Another of those behavior changes was related to me by Kathy Clark, a pediatric physical therapist. Kathy was volunteering in Bhutan’s National Referral Hospital, where 3,500…
This past week, I had the opportunity to attend the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting in San Diego. During the meeting, I attended several sessions focused on the utility of alternative research methods, including PhotoVoice and digital storytelling,…
When Dr. Leo Odongo moved from Mbarara, Uganda, to the smaller city of Kabale in September 2016, he noticed a concerning trend. Patients in Kabale and the surrounding rural areas did not have access to dermatology services. Even more concerning,…
For Karen Stolman, MD the motivation to complete her first global health volunteer assignment came from falling in love. “It started with falling in love with the country of Costa Rica, and having already visited and being fluent in Spanish,”…
Although 2018 Golden Apple Award Recipient Cynthia Howard, MD, MPHTM “had never really volunteered before,” when she first learned of HVO in 1996, the pediatrician already had ample experience practicing medicine in resource-scarce settings. “I had worked a bit abroad,”…