Seed Global health

There is a shortage of 18 million health workers globally, yet more people die from low-quality care than from lack of access. COVID has exploited these dual-realities and uncovered our collective vulnerability to disease.  To improve health, global actors have traditionally sought to "build capacity" but my goal is to change this power dynamic to "share capacity".  If we want to protect the world from future pandemics and equitably improve health for all people, we need to challenge the status quo.  If selected as a winner, I would use my voice and organization to spur a global movement in health, one that creates new models of investment, learning, and partnership that will create a cascade of social, economic, and health benefits for populations that current approaches have failed to reach.  By showing what is possible when governments, funders, and communities co-create opportunities and partner in the long-term, we can not only improve health outcomes but fundamentally change how the world invests in people, lives, and livelihoods.

I founded Seed Global Health in 2011 in response to what I saw as the fly-in and fly-out model of many global health programs.  While many NGOs have sought to improve health by developing curriculums, technologies, or training programs to address specific issues, very few were established through a co-created model that sought to invest in local leaders and capacity in the long-term.  As a critical care physician, I co-founded Seed Global Health with the deep belief that context is incredibly important and that health is a human-centered intervention.  I have seen in my own clinical work and those of our partners that improving health requires a long-term view, patience, and deep appreciation for the context of care delivery.  From the start, we have sought to focus our work on the immense human potential that exists in the health workforce in countries that have critical shortages.  We partner with governments, local leaders, and clinical sites to co-create health programs that address their most pressing health needs and help supply the catalytic human, technical, and financial inputs that can help improvements take root and sustain in the long-term.  

Seed Global Health is challenging the status quo. We seek to inspire a global movement so no patient dies because of health worker shortages and every person can access timely quality health care, regardless of their location.

Across 83 countries, WHO estimates a shortage of 18 million skilled health workers.  To address this global challenge, our goal is to catalyze and inspire new models for improving health, starting with our partner countries: Eswatini, Malawi, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Zambia. As progress to date, we've trained more than 20,000 physicians, nurses, and midwives who are able to provide quality care to more than 27 million in six countries. 

To scale our work further and impact all 83 countries with critical health worker shortages, we continue to partner with governments, NGOs, private sector partners, and local institutions to ensure the replicability of our model to new contexts and countries.

Healthcare is not about providing a quick fix. It’s about creating a multi-generational impact by investing in local health workers and leaders for the long term. We plant the seeds for brighter, healthier futures and transform “what if” into “what is.”

We believe that to rectify the myriad and unacceptable health challenges facing Africa - including crushing burdens of disease, poor infrastructure, and lack of access to quality care - we must start with the health workforce, the essential backbone of health care delivery and innovation.  Focused on countries with critical shortages of health workers, we partner to train nurses, midwives, and physicians, building complete healthcare teams that can provide high-quality care and save lives. Our model is unique because of our distinct partnership model.  Unlike other organizations, our work is not prescriptive but is co-created as long-term partnerships that address a country's most urgent needs.  Additionally, Seed's inputs of human, technical, and financial resources are not one-size-fits-all, but are responsive to stakeholder needs seeking to strengthen clinical care delivery, improve health workforce education, and advance policies that sustain health professionals and their impact.  

While there is a global shortage of health workers, most acutely felt in 83 countries with critical shortages, there is also a tremendous care quality gap around the world.  The World Health Organization report indicates that more preventable deaths occur because of gaps in care quality than because of lack of access.  To address these related issues, Seed Global Health has helped to train more than 20,000 doctors, nurses, and midwives across six countries.  Not only are these individuals available to deliver care and to fill the critical shortages, but these individuals are also able to lead integrated health teams and take on leadership roles in the health system.  To address quality issues, published studies on our model has demonstrated that individuals trained by Seed Global Health are able to provide quality care through increased understanding of clinical concepts, improved ability to bridge the knowledge to practice gaps in clinical service, as well as, greater confidence in delivering patient-centered care.