Project HOPE - 50 Years of Better Health
In April, members of the U.S. Chamber Business Civic Leadership Center will host a meeting in Brussels to build a common understanding of how the private sector, in partnership with public and nonprofit sectors, can effectively contribute to addressing global development challenges. For Project HOPE, partnerships have been key to achieving our mission of improving health for people around the world for the past 50 years.
Project HOPE, an international health education and humanitarian assistance organization was founded in 1958 with a donated Navy hospital ship and a vision that Health Opportunities for People Everywhere could be achieved. Almost immediately, Project HOPE began partnering with corporations such as GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb to help supply the ship with needed medicines, medical supplies and medical volunteers that would bring health and hope to those in need around the world. The ship, the SS HOPE sailed on 11 voyages from 1960-1974. The SS HOPE carried hundreds of volunteer doctors and nurses who cared for thousands, educated local health professionals and provided donated medicines and medical supplies to people in need around the world.
While the SS HOPE was retired in 1974, the mission of Project HOPE forged on with land-based programs and with the help of our successful partnerships with the private industry. Over the course of five decades, Project HOPE and its partners have cultivated respect and lasting friendships in more than 100 countries around the world – often in places not historically receptive to the government and policies of the United States.
In 1974, Project HOPE initiated education programs for health professionals to improve the quality of care for children at the University Children’s Hospital in Krakow, Poland. In 1998 Project HOPE helped open the Shanghai Children’s Medical Center, now one of China’s leading pediatric medical treatment facilities. And later this year, the Basrah Children’s Hospital will open its doors to children suffering from cancer in Iraq. None of these lifesaving facilities would be possible without the support of the private sector, which helped fund essential and sustainable health professional education and provide state-of-the-art equipment and medicines.
Project HOPE continues to partner with government, business, academia, military and a variety of health care professionals – each bringing their own expertise – to address and provide solutions to health care challenges worldwide. One of our most successful public/private partnership is our partnership with corporations and the U.S. Navy that has helped rekindle our ship-based health education programs and care for hundreds of thousands of people who might otherwise not receive care.
More about this particular program later.
John P. Howe, III, M.D. is President and Chief Executive Officer of Project HOPE.
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