How Community Health Workers Could Save 30 Million Lives By 2030

When Dr. Raj Panjabi talks about starting his nonprofit, Last Mile Health, he describes being motivated by both love and outrage. At nine years old, Panjabi had to flee his home in Liberia to escape civil war; he and his family relocated to the U.S. When Panjabi returned to his home country as a medical student, he discovered there were only 51 doctors left to serve the country’s four million people. As a result, many residents were dying from treatable conditions, especially in rural areas, simply because they lived too far away from doctors and hospitals. “We’ve kind of written these communities off as too hard to reach or too hard to serve,” Panjabi told an audience on June 6 at the WeWork Security Building in Miami. “No one should die because they live too far from a doctor, not in the 21st century.” Panjabi’s talk, which was moderated by TIME Staff Writer Alexandra Sifferlin, was the first in the TIME 100 x WeWork Speaker Series, an extension of TIME’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Panjabi, the CEO of Last Mile Health, was a 2016 TIME 100 honoree. MORE: TIME and WeWork Partner to Launch TIME 100 x WeWork Speaker Series To tackle health care gaps like the one in Liberia, Dr. Panjabi founded a nonprofit, Last Mile Health, whose goal is to bring health care within reach of “everyone, everywhere.” The key: community health workers, or individuals recruited from their own communities w...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized community health workers Dr. Raj Panjabi ebola Health Care Last Mile Health medicine TIME 100 TIME 100 x WeWork Speaker Series Zika Source Type: news