A Growing Global Health Corps

Jonny Dorsey is on a quest. As the 20-something co-founder and executive director of the Global Health Corps, he's working with a team of just four full-time staffers to produce an ambitious goal: an ever-growing network of young leaders in the fight for global health. Global Health Corps is a relatively new organization -- founded just two years ago -- but already it has 22 fellows in the field, each paired with different health organizations across Rwanda, Tanzania and Malawi. The idea to incubate a global network of leaders that will eventually number in the thousands and weigh in with a serious policy voice, as well as boots on the ground.

The group may be young, but it's clearly tapped into a strong current: its inaugural round of fellowships attracted over 1,000 applications. As Global Health Corps gears up to recruit its second class of 34 fellows, Dorsey spoke with Change.org via phone this afternoon:

In some ways, Global Health Corps seems modeled on Teach for America -- was that the inspiration?

Originally, we did first pitch this idea as a kind a Teach for America for global health. They've created a path for talented young leaders to get into education, and built a community around them to support continued careers in that space. So certainly, what they've done is a great inspiration. We also looked at City Year quite a bit -- they do work that combines tangible service with community building and leadership development that I think is absolutely amazing.

So apart from the obvious difference in mission, what makes Global Health Corps' approach distinctive?

Something we're trying to do that we think is innovative is make this is a really global fellowship. We send out our fellows in teams of two -- an international fellow and an in-country fellow -- who are genuinely equal partners. In Rwanda, for example, it'd be a young American with a young Rwandan, and in Malawi, it'd be a young Malawi with a young American. We also have six fellows who work in the United States, too -- four in Newark, NJ and two in Boston. In those situations, the U.S. fellow is the in-country representative.

So we're working to build a global community that can make the fellowship much more meaningful and deep. I love it. Because if you want to talk about building a new generation of leaders in health, it has to be global. We need leaders working in global heath in the U.S., and on the country level around the world. It's the only way to help strengthen this movement in the direction it needs and to take on these challenges.

Global Health Corps sends fellows to work with groups from Partners in Health to the Clinton Health Access Initiative. What kinds of skills are your partners looking for?

It's clustered around a few areas. There's definitely a need for help with technology and [information technology]. With groups trying to work on electronic medical records, managing IT systems is a major area of need. Supply chain management, too. A huge problem organizations face is how to manage the massive influx in medicine they get, and how to get it out to patients without overstocking it in certain health centers and having it expire, or running into shortages. Particularly with anti-retroviral drugs, breaks in treatment are really bad for patients, so managing the supply of drugs is really important from both a patient care and financial standpoint.

Can you share one story about the impact GHC fellows are making on the ground?
One of our fellows, Jafari, is working in Zanzibar. There's just one central medical store there where all the drugs from donor countries come in, but there are more than 100 clinics in Zanzibar that serve as distribution points for patients. Before Jafari arrived, all management was done on paper, and there wasn't really a system to try and forecast what was going to be used. So Jafari has helped them build a system using Excel. It's not some crazy complicated system, or it wouldn't be useful, but they're going to pilot it at a few different clinics. It's really exciting stuff to see.

For readers who might be interested in applying, what's the background of a typical fellow?

They come from all sorts of backgrounds. Peace-building, development studies -- some have MPHs. A few of them came out of the private sector as well, which we're really excited about. One fellow had worked at Gap with their supply chain, and now he's working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative. The types of roles for fellows really range: we need people who can do computing science for programming, but we need people with more of a managing background -- for example, to help Partners in Health build out their human resources strategy. We want to recruit people with a very diverse background. It makes our community more rich.

What kinds of organizations do fellows work with? At what level?

We're working with organizations at both ends of the spectrum. For example, in Burundi, we're working with Friends Womens Association, which was founded during the war by a group of women, some of who were widowed in the war. They wanted to provide health services to their community, and it's as grassroots as you can get, a really beautiful story. Our fellows are going to help build a tracking system for their patients, helping them aggregate outcome data to create a stronger partnership between them and the government.

On the other side, we'll have fellows working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Burundi as well, helping advise the government on how to better utilize nurses in Burundi. That's their primary charge. So, by contrast, they'll be working on the highest government levels, advising on policy that will affect millions of people in Burundi.

Your application deadline for U.S. candidates is coming up this March 1, and for international candidates, the month after. What would you tell people thinking about applying?

This is more than just a job. We're really excited to recruit people who want to devote a big chunk of their lives to working on global health and social justice, and want to be part of a community that's doing the same.

For more details on Global Health Corps, and to apply, visit their website here.

Photo Credit: desevilla