The proposed plan for the shipping container clinic. Partnering with U of M and their project the Third Century Initiative.
EHI is partnering with The University of Michigan’s project the Third Century Initiative.
What is the Third Century Initiative? As University of Michigan prepares to celebrate its bicentennial in 2017, the Third Century Initiative has been established to inspire innovative programs that enhance the student learning experience and develop creative approaches to the world’s greatest challenges.
The first stage in our partnership with The Third Century Initiative is addressing the need for a place to hold exams and equipment in rural areas of Jamaica. Because the island has such a humid climate we face great challenges with our medical equipment, the humidity is extremely hard on the equipment that we keep in the island. We need a space that is climate controlled to extend the lifespan of the existing medical equipment we have.
To address this, the Third Century Initiative has retrofitted a shipping container with climate controlled equipment and have shipped the pod to Jamaica. We have been given space to put this pod at a health center outside of Hanover. Our hope, as we test this first prototype model and as we move forward in our partnership with the Third Century Initiative, is that we can expand our outreach in remote areas of Jamaica.
But this is just the beginning. What Third Century Initiative is capable of doing with this project is bringing healthcare to remote areas all over the world to help give the best care to the people who need it the most. The Eye Health Institute is proud to be partnering with this program and helping the advancement of healthcare across the globe.
The Third Century Initiative pod on it’s home on a cement slab in Hanover Jamaica
The team putting the pod in place
“Common Health” EHI partnered with Michigan University
Our Equipment inside pod
Proposed plans
Below is letter from Dr. Joseph Myers speaking about the partnership between U of M’s Third Century Initiative and EHI:
The university of Michigan and Eye Health Institute (EHI) have been privileged to embark on a project that when completed will revolutionize the nature of eye care globally. The project will expand access to eye care and assist the practitioner in diagnosis and treatment of ocular conditions by means of developing robust and inexpensive technologies.
Avers Donabenian (The Father of Quality Health Assurance) once said, “Systems awareness and systems design are important for health professionals, but they are not enough. They are enabling mechanisms only. It is the ethical dimensions of individuals that are essential to a system’s success.
Ultimately, the secret quality is love. You have to love your patient, you have to love your profession, you have to love your God. If you have love, you can then work backward to monitor and improve the system.
In this statement lies the essence of our work. What we do in Jamaica is in extension of the love we have for the culture and the direct reflection of the love and acceptance that is displayed unto our group by the citizens of the land of wood and waters.
In this moment we have the wonderful opportunity to create beauty past the shores of Jamaica, like a pebble tossed into a pond, this work will have a global resonance to touch the very nature of healthcare everywhere.
We know that the model that we create is a direct extension of our core belief, that healthcare is not a privilege but a human right. We believe in the ideology that we are our brother’s keepers. We believe our citizenship extends globally and is not constrained, because in our hearts we manifests blindness to ideological and physical borders.
I invite you to join us in this journey. We have enlisted the best minds from the fields of healthcare, architecture, business, engineering and manufacturing. All have extended themselves to sacrifice time and resources to create a model that has eloquence in it’s message “All People Matter”.
With you help we will be able to soon say “look at this wonderful thing we’ve done together”.