In partnership with Friends of Shirati, a nonprofit supporting Shirati Hospital in northern Tanzania, this project integrates advanced clinical care, community outreach, and sustainable health leadership development.
Our multidisciplinary team, consisting of students, faculty, and global health clinicians, will deliver care through four core components:
Pediatric HIV Care — Assisting in a high-need HIV clinic supporting children and families with education, medication access, and stigma reduction
Hospital-Based Critical Care — Collaborating in the ICU and trauma units at Shirati Hospital to manage emergent and complex cases in a resource-limited setting
Pop-Up Community Clinics — Providing mobile healthcare services to rural villages that lack routine access, with a focus on primary care, maternal health, and tropical medicine
Capacity-Building and Leadership Training — Engaging with Tanzanian providers in skills exchange, trauma training, and future telehealth partnerships
This mission is not a one-time event. It is the foundation for a recurring academic partnership, embedding experiential learning, service, and leadership into the fabric of the EMGH curriculum. It will make a lasting difference by building trust, improving access, and investing in long-term systems of care.
Population Served (Who will benefit from your project? Why this population?)
Project Tumaini directly serves the rural populations of the Shirati region of northern Tanzania, an area facing significant health disparities due to poverty, geographic isolation, and limited access to specialized medical services. The communities around Shirati Hospital, many of whom are subsistence farmers or fishermen, experience high rates of infectious disease (especially HIV, TB, and malaria), maternal and child mortality, and barriers to continuity of care.
Our collaboration with Friends of Shirati prioritizes underserved patients who might otherwise go without care.
Pediatric HIV patients, trauma victims, and villagers in hard-to-reach areas. Many families walk hours to seek care, and the hospital often operates beyond its capacity. By partnering directly with Tanzanian providers, our goal is to improve not only the volume of services delivered during our visit but also to contribute to a more resilient and empowered health system. I am particularly interested in this population as I hope to be able to teach them more about their development through ultrasound technology.
We will return year after year, and there will be an ongoing series of teams rotating through the hospital to serve, ensuring continuity and best practices for local communities.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UzGEDbKWjv-5WDR0cjmftSGVogtcpv5-d5a2dTD7H2Q/edit?usp=sharing
