From AIDS to Population Health

Book excerpt: From AIDS to Population Health explores the thirty-year history of a unique collaboration between the medical schools of Indiana University and Moi University in Kenya, as it progressed from combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic in East Africa to the building of a national plan to provide universal healthcare to all. The Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) program focuses on the medical education of healthcare professionals who are building communities that can take care of themselves. The overwhelming success of the AMPATH program and its continuing vibrant legacy today are showcased through dozens of striking photographs, telling interviews, and revealing anecdotes and encounters. It focuses on four of the most innovative projects among the fifty that AMPATH oversees: a microfinance officer who organizes villagers, an oncology nurse who runs outreach clinics, a farm extension agent working in partnership with a multinational agriculture corporation to improve farm output, and a special healthcare clinic exclusively for adolescents. Over its thirty-year history, AMPATH has served more than a million clients and trained 2,600 medical professionals and community health workers, always guided by its motto "Leading with Care." From AIDS to Population Health presents their compelling stories and explores the program's continuing legacy for the first time.