Putting the Humanity (and Humility) in Humanitarian Work with Dr. Glenn Geelhoed
Dr. Chris Stout
LinkedIn Top Voice | Best Selling Author | Adventurer | Startup Whisperer | (Accidental) Humanitarian | APA's "Rockstar" Psychologist | éminence Grise
As longtime listeners know, all of my guests have some type of involvement in humanitarian or philanthropic endeavors, but I have to say that this guest is an all-star from that very deep bench.
Dr. Glenn Geelhoed received his BS and AB degrees from Calvin College and his MD, cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He completed his surgical internship and residency through Harvard University at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Following that, he served as clinical associate and senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute in the National Institutes of Health. After completion of his chief surgical residency, he joined George Washington University in Washington, DC, as a full-time faculty.
Additionally, he completed master’s degrees in international affairs; epidemiology, health promotion and disease prevention, anthropology, and a PhD in human sciences. Dr. Geelhoed works as a Professor of Surgery, International Medical Education, and in Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine, at GWU Medical Center, where he developed both the Medical Anthropology and Tropical Medicine programs within the MPH curriculum.
He is a member of numerous medical, surgical, and international academic societies, and is an author with more than 800 published journal articles and book chapters, along with several books, including his most recent – Furthest Peoples First – which is based on his work as the founder of Mission to Heal. Dr. Geelhoed has conducted medical mission trips around the globe for over forty years, with some amazingly clever solutions to sustainable healthcare.
He has received innumerable awards and recognitions for his work in global health, including the prestigious humanitarian award for outreach to the underserved from the American College of Surgeons—one of the highest honors in the surgical field. His highlight-reel also includes:
- An appointment as clinical scholar of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- Humanitarian of the Year from GEORGE Magazine
- Faculty Distinguished Service Award from George Washington University Medical School
- He is an Inductee to the Paris Academy of Surgery
- Past President of the Washington Academy of Surgeons
- Traveling Scholar with the James the IV Association of Surgeons. and
- A Senior Fulbright Scholar.
He is also an avid runner having completed more than 135 marathons across the globe. When he’s not overseas, he resides at his home in Derwood, Maryland, and enjoys spending time with his two sons and five grandchildren.
We started this episode with his latest book to set a context for understanding his work and the work of Mission to Heal. It’s entitled Furthest Peoples First: M2H's Mission to Teach Mobile Surgical Care for Africa's Sick, Poor, and Remote. His friend, Freeman Dyson, penned a beautiful Foreword just prior to his passing, and the book tracks Glenn’s missions in three African transects during the first seven months of 2019 and we discussed what spurred him to write it. Also of note is that the proceeds from the book go to support Mission to Heal’s work.
During our conversation, I was reminded of the “see one, do one, teach one” approach that I learned as a medical school professor. But Glenn has stepped that up by defining the objective of Mission to Heal as being to “develop an economical and sustainable system that provides high quality, ongoing surgical care to populations in need, not with endless funding, but with ingenuity and education.” He shared the work and structure of Mission to Heal and why he started it some forty years ago.
He and I geeked-out a little about his MAN-Cats in terms of specs and performance, triple point failure, and the Swords-into-Plowshares saga as to how they came into being. We discussed why it is he believes surgery a “mark of modernity” in healthcare, and what makes it so important to remote communities.
I love how he recognizes and values the resourcefulness of those he works with in-country, and the hope they have for their own progress. While he teaches clinical and technical skills, he does so with a refreshing ethos of humanity and humility.
Glenn noted that medical mission experiences are key to transformational learning for medical students. I very much respect his shunning the more common Colonialism often rampant in medical missions, or West-knows-best hubris, and instead his desire to “indigenize surgery.” He made key points on this philosophy vis-à-vis Mission to Heal’s vision in the context of global health and sustainable medical missions.
In spite of Glenn being more of a “workhorse than a show horse,” there are two documentary films that have been produced concerning his work—Surgery on the 6th Ring of Saturn and We Are the Ones.
We also went deep and discussed how he selects where to go, how he develops partnerships, deals with corruption, crime, and safety, as well as how he manages the logistics of materials, trucks, and staff. We talked about the high recidivism rate of his volunteers (that is, 100% of them go on do more than one mission trip), why that is, and what makes for a good volunteer.
At the end of his book, he discusses some metrics and outcomes of Mission to Heal, and I wanted to be sure note some of his greatest hits:
- Over 5 decades and more than 400 missions
- A focus in the most remote areas of Africa, South America, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Mongolia
- >2500 medical student volunteers and returning volunteers
- 2250 indigenous healthcare workers trained
- Hundreds of thousands of lives saved or enhanced
- Simple and effective materials and means
- Ingenuity and improvisation
- Respect for and sensitivity to local culture, and
- Indigenous ownership of community medical resources and overall well-being
We ended with covering Mission to Heal’s greatest challenges, sustainability, what’s next in 2021 and beyond vis-à-vis how to plan in the midst of a pandemic and limited air travel.
Glenn is the Cheshire Cat of humanitarian work, his smile is what’s left as he lives his life in full, and helps others to survive and do the same.
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