President’s Update: Record Numbers + New Board Member

The second quarter of 2016 was a busy and exciting time for Grounds for Health. Our programs in Nicaragua, Peru, Ethiopia and Kenya screened a total of 4,924 women and delivered preventive therapy to 367 who were found to have pre-cancerous lesions. These are the highest quarterly totals in our 20-year history.

The Ethiopia program alone—in just one quarter—served more women than all Grounds for Health programs combined in the whole of 2013. We are proud of these results, which represent tremendous effort on the part of many field staff, clinical consultants, and, of course, our partners in-country. We warmly appreciate everyone whose generous contributions are making it possible for us to serve more women. Thank you!

Professor Groesbeck Parham

A second reason to celebrate was the addition of Professor Groesbeck Parham to our Board. Professor Parham has devoted his professional life to improving the lives of the world’s poor through efforts to reduce inequalities in health care. He is professor of gynecologic oncology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He founded the Cervical Cancer Prevention Program in Zambia, where he has lived for more than 10 years. His many honors include awards from the Society of Gynecologic Oncology, the Congressional Black Caucus and the United Nations, as well as honorary doctorate degrees from Oberlin College and Southern Methodist University. We look forward to working with Professor Parham to further strengthen our programs, especially in Africa.

Finally, we continue to face many obstacles as we work to increase access to life-saving services in neglected areas of the world. A lack of consistent and reliable funding remains our main challenge, and as such, this last quarter we reluctantly were forced to suspend our program in Nicaragua after eight years. We would like to thank all the volunteers, in-country staff and many partners who made our work there a success—more than 17,000 women were screened and 1,830 treated. We are pursuing new partnerships as we seek to maximize our impact in Latin America and beyond.

All in all, we’ve had a successful summer so far and look forward to what the rest of 2016 brings. Thank you for supporting us on this important journey.