- People tend to think of surgery as a luxury—
but it is a cornerstone of global public health.
Around three million people a year die
of HIV, TB, and malaria combined—
and about 10 million people a year die from cancer.
The people that are dying
from lack of access to surgery dwarf those numbers.
We have a responsibility to train enough people
to be able to treat those people that are dying today.
As a foundation, we're thinking about building
the fundamental educational infrastructure
that will allow there to be
enough high-quality surgeons out there
to meet these global needs.
The mission of the Intuitive Foundation
is to help reduce the global burden of disease,
and to improve outcomes for patients everywhere.
We really believe that the main ways to do this,
that we will be most effective, is through philanthropy
and education—
especially research into educational methods—
is one of the highest leverage ways that we can think of
to make a lasting effect around the world.
When we think about the way
we traditionally teach surgery,
we confine learning to medical schools,
and the environment around teaching hospitals,
and we don't have as much of a mechanism
for continuing education anywhere in the world.
What we do is fund research programs
in clinical research, as well as doing
outward-facing programs like training surgeons
in low- and middle-income countries,
or training biomedical engineers
to maintain surgical equipment.
- We also look for other opportunities
that really try to gear more of the underserved
into areas where you often don't see them in medicine.
So, for example, surgery is a discipline
for which you, unfortunately, don't see a lot of minorities.
- Our outreach initiative is one of the programs
that we have to address the problem
of the leaky pipeline of women and minorities
in STEM and healthcare.
What we mean by the “leaky pipeline”
is it's possible to inspire
all kinds of young students to go into STEM fields
or healthcare fields, but along the way,
there are a lot of things that systematically
will knock them off of that path.
- Unfortunately, you see a lack of interest
in STEM and healthcare, which really comes from
a lack of exposure.
And so, how the foundation is really trying
to address this leaky pipeline is by reaching
the underserved community and kids as early as possible
to really expose them to STEM and healthcare,
and all the great possibilities that are available to them.
- Hey, how you guys doing?
I'm a strong believer that the power of education
can break that cycle of poverty.
Hey, good morning, Icks.
Our program provides STEM enrichment
for underserved students in grades 6-12
here in central North Carolina.
Saturday Academy is an opportunity for students
to come to a major college campus and to gain exposure
in areas of STEM that they probably would not have
at their regular high schools.
Our middle school students:
most engage into a robotics coding class.
Our high school students are taking
a college planning class.
- One of the things that I think
that this program does really well
is very holistically looks at:
How do we really help elevate kids,
and how do we help refine
the attributes that they have
so that when they get to high school,
they're really thinking about college,
they're really thinking about next steps?
- How can you get this one to turn on?
That's your challenge.
- We want our students to be in a position
where they're comfortable enough
to be able to express themselves well,
to be able to engage with anyone,
and hopefully get that full scholarship to college—
which is just life-changing for a lot of families.
- Hey!
- I think that this mission
around getting more underserved communities
and people engaged and involved
with STEM and healthcare
is only gonna make our world better.
And when you look at what Catherine
and all of the volunteers really want this to be
over the next 5, 10, 20 years—
it is absolutely limitless.
- The goal that we are working towards
is a blooming ecosystem where anyone can come in
and learn how to do the procedures
that are necessary to save or improve the lives
of the people in the community that they live in.
People think about the lack of access to surgeons
as demographic problems, as people problems—
but they're people solutions.
You have to train people.
You have to give people access to that education
in order to allow them to care for one another.
So, we see making lasting changes
in the environments that we are
intending to affect is really, at its core, education.
And that's the revolution we wanted to create.