Providing Care to Farming Communities

“We go. We make house calls. We build health systems. We stay.”  This is Partners in Health’s first line of their mission to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care.  Mexico guarantees universal health coverage, but for anyone living in a rural / remote location public clinics are often empty because no doctors are assigned, or they’re assigned temporarily. Partners in Health operates clinics in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Chiapas.

My fellowship was in Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico, as a volunteer fellow from January to June 2015. There I helped operate twelve rural clinics providing much-needed care to poor farming communities with very limited access to modern medicine. During this time, I often worked with a Mexican public health system that, despite innumerate shortcomings, still proudly held true to the notion that health is a universal human right. I noticed this to be a notion conspicuously absent from health dialogue in the United States, and so it was a new way of thinking for me. However, after witnessing how the lack of basic health services severely limited opportunities for poor Mexicans and impinged on their ability to live lives with dignity, I also came to believe that health is a fundamental human right.

I was able to help with day-to-day operations (e.g. automating their patient tracking system), but mostly I spent my time producing a comprehensive report on healthcare in Chiapas. Through this report, I documented the main health challenges the people in the state face in terms of burden of disease, as well as the existing health infrastructure and where the major gaps were. This report was shared with the State Senator of Chiapas to identify the key priorities in how to improve healthcare in an area where effective healthcare coverage was the lowest in Mexico.

I am extremely thankful that Oliver Wyman provides such amazing flexibility to pursue interests outside of the firm. It’s allowed me to broaden my perspective and has been an unforgettable experience.