A new adventure... SAFE Surgery

We are headed back to Uganda! But first... we remember where we came from. Richard and I first met when I hired him to go to Uganda with me for a year-long fellowship, in which we worked for the nonprofit I had founded called Safe Mothers, Safe Babies (SAFE).

Over the course of 12 years, SAFE developed a robust approach to reducing maternal and child mortality through community-based outreach as well as health system strengthening. We enjoyed many successes, but unfortunately had to close in 2021 when Richard and I were working 80 - 100 hours a week on the frontlines of the pandemic. At the time, Richard was in residency and I was a Public Health Nursing Manager at a local health department in the U.S., on the frontlines of pandemic response.

Now that Richard has completed his training and is an attending general surgeon, and now the pandemic has waned, we are resuming our work in Uganda, but with a twist! We are uniting my love for and skills in public health and nursing with Richard's advanced skills in general surgery to found a new entity called SAFE Surgery (Safe, Accessible, Free, and Equitable). Having rekindled partnerships and developed new ones, we are excited to begin this work. Our first trip to Uganda is scheduled for May of 2025, but we will be working in the interim with our Ugandan partners to solidify our longer term plans for sustainable improvements to surgical care.

As we take on this work, what we remember most are the faces of the many patients we saw when we lived and worked in Uganda previously--the patients who suffered or died from a treatable condition because they couldn't access the basic care that they needed in time. We honor them today by working to prevent that from happening to others. We join with our Ugandan counterparts to say: no more. We believe that every person--no matter where they were born, or what identities they may hold--has a right to high-quality surgical care. And we are honored to take up the mantle to fight for that right in partnership with our Ugandan colleagues.