my name is Chris Lewis and I'm here to
talk to you about a world very far away
from yours Martin Luther King once said
that life's most pressing and urgent
persistent and urgent question is what
are you doing for others I never thought
that my quest to answer this question
would take me exactly 7777 miles away
from Cincinnati to a country called
Tanzania in East Africa to try to answer
that question and do my best to help
other people in that quest I learned the
importance of a second question
Arendt Luther King's question was what
are you doing for others the question
that I learned was and what I'll call
life's second most persistent and urgent
question is what are you learning from
others I've had plenty of people can
learn from in my life as a young boy my
parents instilled in me the value of
learning from other people they pushed
me to learn all about King and some
other famous folks
my father didn't graduate high school
and was a blue-collar labor my mother
didn't finish college work for you see
all of her life just so I could go to
college for free and then I bypassed
that and went to Harvard but came back
from medical school to Cincinnati but
they taught me the importance of
learning from other people and they made
that possible by always putting people
in my life that I could learn from like
my old pediatrician doctor or when
dunsky the late great Irwin Dunn ski
this is a quote from his obituary with
this quiet and gentle manner his expert
handling of frightened patients and
endless supply of lollipops dr. dulski
was so well regarded that many beg to be
kept on it as his patients even after
the cutoff age of 21 he cared for three
generations of many families mine
included and I think I was 22 when he
actually kicked me out and said he had
to find an adult doctor my parents sent
me to finneytown high school I know it's
not Mason but finneytown
was an environment where I could learn
from a lot of teachers a lot of coaches
and my fellow students the importance of
life giving back and of course learning
from other people that firm foundation
and childhood allowed me to go to one of
the most prestigious colleges in the
world Harvard College in Cambridge man
chooses where I spent yes a lot of time
in the classroom hitting the books but I
would argue to you don't tell your
parents this but I learned more from my
social network than I did in the
classroom these are guys that maybe look
a lot alike but they're from all over
the world Africa New York different
parts of America the West Indies and I
learned to have a global perspective
from my friends in college I came back
from college at Cincinnati and was lucky
enough to get into UC College of
Medicine where again my focus was yes on
the classroom knowledge which was a lot
a lot of volume of information at a very
quick pace I almost didn't make it
through but thanks to a lot of people
that were my mentors and my teachers I
was able to learn from them and progress
and finally graduate by the skin of my
teeth
and a lot of that came from my study
partner in Maine who I learned a lot
from him as well those long nights in
the laboratory I had never been overseas
at that point and finishing medical
school I stayed in Cincinnati for my
medical residency and family medicine
this is where you're actually a doctor
but you are a doctor in training you
have those two letters behind your name
MD but you still have to be precepted
and proctored with all patient care
experiences but I had the opportunity to
travel to Honduras and El Salvador as
part of the global health track and
family medicine at the residency program
here at UC and they're my mentor Jeff
HEC taught me the importance of applying
that lesson of learning from other
people to global health work I had known
that growing up I had learned a lot from
other people but according to dr. Hecht
the best way to do global health was to
enter community and form relationships
by walking in to the discussion with
your hands in your pockets why so you're
not tempted to use those hands that give
people stuff to give handouts to talk
and give and say I'm going to do this
for you I'm going to do this for you
when you walk into those communities to
form relationships with your hands in
your pockets the only thing you can
really do
is listen and learn from those
communities I took that philosophy and
after experiencing some global health
work in Honduras and El Salvador I
wanted to apply that model to Tanzania
East Africa I had the opportunity to get
a stipend from the residency program
they paid my way for a month to go work
in a facility jarate KMT Hospital in
Tanzania at the time it was one of two
hospitals for a region of half-a-million
people for folks in Cincinnati that
probably sounds strange from my office
at the University of Cincinnati I could
walk within 20 minutes to probably eight
or nine different hospitals folks in
Tanzania and this part of Tanzania have
to walk hours sometimes days just to get
to the nearest healthcare this hospital
has sometimes running water sometimes
doesn't sometimes they have medicine
sometimes they don't sometimes they
don't even have electricity you might be
in the middle of a surgery and people
are pulling out flashlights because the
lights go off at night while you're in
the middle of taking out someone's colon
but all the time this hospital does a
great job of using whatever resources
they have to take care of people so here
I was in 2003 my final month of
residency sama I almost finished with my
training and ready to go out on in the
world Here I am in Tanzania with all of
my vast medical knowledge from the
University of Cincinnati thinking that I
am going to use that knowledge to help
other people and change the world and
save lives
Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee that was my
perspective despite knowing the
importance of learning from other people
I thought that in this setting it was
gonna be about what I could do to help
other people my first patient was a lady
like this a pregnant lady she was
already a mother she was in labor and
trying to walk eight hours to get to the
hospital that I was working at she was
hemorrhaging or bleeding along the way
and by the time she got to the office
where I was working she had died that
experience completely flipped upside
down my thoughts about what I was there
for heck it changed my perspective on
what my role in life was and despite the
fact that she was dead I actually
learned a lot from that lady I proceeded
to work the rest of that month
with some superstars of mentoring and
teaching dr. Esther career her husband
Josiah dr. matagi we saw a lot of
patients like that kid in the lower
left-hand corner with Burkitt's lymphoma
a childhood tumor that can be easily
treated if you have the right treatment
and know how like the folks in this
picture do I came back from that month
and Tans in the end started working for
what is now known as UC health and I was
ecstatic to be working in one of the
mission practices for the healthcare
system seeing a whole bunch of people
that didn't necessarily have the best
access to health care in my practice
where family medicine so that means we
see patients of all ages from their very
young to the very old but coming back to
Cincinnati I felt like something was
missing I had that desire to go back to
Tanzania and see patients from the very
young to the very old I love my work at
the College of Medicine and at UC
working on diversity and inclusion and
academics programs and things like that
but this pull to say man what if I could
challenge students from Cincinnati to
experience even just a drop of what I
learned when I was in Tanzania could i
potentially take some students with me
and that led to the found the the
founding and village life outreach
project village life is a Cincinnati
based nonprofit organization whose
mission is to unite communities to
promote life health and education so
everything we do is kind of broken up
into those three buckets we work to
improve people's lives improve their
health and improve their educational
opportunities and this is what it looks
like this is one of the villages in
which we work in Tanzania we're talking
about people living in the depths of
poverty living on less than a dollar a
day and we're talking about people
living in mud huts with no access to
electricity no access to running water
we're talking about a 12 to 15 percent
HIV infection rate we're talking about
children who at the end of the
equivalent of elementary school the
girls typically go get married and have
children of their own and the boys
become fishermen or farmers to make
income to feed their families
very tough life we're talking about
families that have children and they
don't expect that all of their children
are going
to live but those children that do live
man they are something fierce and they
will teach you something a measure of
wealth in the communities that we work
in in Tanzania it's not how much money
you have or what kind of car you drive
most people don't have cars or bikes
some of them don't even have shoes the
measure of wealth where we work in
Tanzania is what are you doing for other
people
best way to elevate your status in their
society is to be community oriented help
out at the school help someone whose
crops didn't come in by giving them some
of yours that's the measure of wealth in
the society in which we work in Tanzania
and that is the number one learning
example that we try to bring back to
Cincinnati the folks that I lived with
and worked with that first month by
myself when I was still a resident
mobilize informed our partner
organization in Tanzania the sharat
eHealth education and development
foundation and I told him hey I think I
want to come back and they advised me
Chris that's great we'd love to have you
come back and maybe do something like
you did before for a month in the
hospital but how much impact did you
really have in fact we would argue that
you might have had a little bit of
impact but you probably received more
than you gave so what do you want to
come back for that question led to
discussions that then led to me saying
okay maybe it's not the best idea for me
to just go back by myself minimal impact
what if I formed an organization that
could bring resources and human talent
from Cincinnati to Tanzania to work in
three villages that are partners in the
shed Foundation picked for us the
village of Roche the iboga and the
ray-ray
these were communities picked based on
their need and their willingness to
partner so we went October of 2004 we
took a team of 14 people very heavily
health care focused some medical
students and doctors and nurses and
nursing students and we started seeing
patients in field clinics mainly just as
a carrot to say hey we're here we want
to help we want to answer that question
from King but we also want to learn from
you so we had dialogues with the
community sat down with the community
leaders that village chair people and
started talking and they told us
something very important they said Chris
this is great you're a doc
you got a team of healthcare
professionals and students will take all
the health care that you can give us
we'll partner with you in that we'll do
our part you do your part but let's back
up can your organization help us get
access to clean water because half of
the diseases that you're people are
gonna be treating while you're here are
coming from our people not having access
to clean water another lightbulb moment
another flip your whole perspective
upside down Here I am as a doctor
knowing the importance of listening and
learning and we had gone in full
throttle to another region of the world
thinking we could help partner with
these people and solve some of their
problems and then have the conversation
about how can we really help clean water
that led us as an organization to
develop the concept of committee work
whereby we have committees for life and
water health and education in Tanzania
that have AI directional learning with
their counterpart committees here in
Cincinnati so we have about a hundred
active committee members in Tanzania
about a hundred active committee members
and Cincinnati of these are all
volunteer folks and rather than us going
in and saying here we have this idea
let's try to solve your problem by doing
this the problems actually bubble up
from the tanzanian committees and many
of the solutions come from those people
and again despite not method necessarily
having access to the best education most
of those folks aren't high school or
college educated they are profoundly
intelligent and have a lot to teach us
that bi-directional learning Cincinnati
and Tanzania has led to some remarkable
things our life or water committee has
been able to do some pretty cool
projects here's the problem the two Q's
of water people often don't have a good
quality or quantity of water in the
region in Tanzania where we work little
kids get up and have to start their day
by walking about an hour to get to a
pond that has dirty filthy water that'll
make him sick if they drink it so what
do you do how do you solve that problem
what we've learned with village life is
you start by trying to learn as much as
you can from the people that are living
that day to day this is an example we're
sitting in the middle surrounded by the
committee members
and having bidirectional learning here's
the resources that we can bring from
Cincinnati in the knowledge base and the
technical know-how that we have you all
have other things to contribute as well
how can we work together and learn from
each other to improve conditions of
water we can do some pretty cool
projects with that type of perspective
slow sand filtration collecting
rainwater off of gutters digging
latrines to make sure that the
groundwater is cleaner partnering with
engineers Without Borders that you see
to drill wells and to connect those
wells to distribution systems so that
people don't have to walk all day to get
to that one well they can go to their
local tap stand ten to 12 tap Stan's per
village to spread it out so you don't
have to walk so far ingenuity at its
finest but people working together
learning from each other with UC
students engineering students learning
how to apply classroom knowledge to
solve real-world problems and learning
that from their Tanzanian counterparts
that's what one of the taps stands looks
like and that's what it looks like when
bi-directional learning leads to people
having access to clean water for their
first times in their lives and that's
what it looks like on the faces of our
UC students who have yes gone to serve
but again like myself they might have
had a little bit of an impact but those
students come back with more impact than
what they gave our Health Committee
operates with a similar method here's
the problem death and dying and sickness
is real in many parts of the world
realer than you would ever imagine in
the confines of your own home here in
Cincinnati what do you do when
confronted with this well our style is
to learn from the community see what
ideas they have to offer and that can
lead to bringing cincinnati doctors and
nurses and health care providers to
cincinnati to partner with the community
that can lead to us training local
healthcare workers and organizing them
mobilizing them to go out in the
community and do cool projects that save
lives like distributing mosquito nets
and other sorts of very cool projects we
can use the resources of our healthcare
community in cincinnati to make a
difference in the healthcare
munity in Tanzania and have a little fun
along the way mosquito net prevent for
malaria prevention treatment of various
diseases by partnering with the
community and learning from them and
with a little bit of forward momentum
you might one day get a big check that
allows you to do something pretty cool
like build a health center where you see
students in architecture partner with
the community in Tanzania to learn from
them and teach them how to build their
own health center this isn't us going in
and building it for them this is us
teaching them and learning from them
their construction techniques and
helping them make those techniques
better health clinic built by the young
community and then you get an even
bigger check because you're doing
something quite profound
with this bi-directional learning model
and that's what the health clinic looks
like where people are now instead of
having to make that 8-hour walk and die
along the way they can go around the
corner behind the bushes to their own
health community health center that
their community built for them with a
spirit of hoodoo novel moja that
Tanzanian national motto freedom and
unity we do a lot of work in education
as well it starts with identifying the
problem and then talking to the people
and learning from them the teachers the
mothers the Headmaster's the entire
community so that we can do pretty cool
projects like our nutrition project that
feeds 2,000 kids every day so that they
have full bellies on which to learn
getting kids to school kids over there
many of them have to walk three hours
one way just to get to school a bike
cuts that travel time to 45 minutes the
conditions of the schools this wall has
since fallen down luckily class wasn't
in session because some kids would have
gotten hurt or worse partnering with the
community teaching them better
construction techniques learning from
their existing construction techniques
and learning what their needs are and
how they intend to solve them partnering
with them to build new schools that's
what it looks like on the faces of those
students and then we're able to bring
that knowledge and learning from
Tanzania back
Cincinnati through partnerships with our
local schools so that the knowledge
doesn't die with us we're able to pass
it on to first graders and high school
students at Hughes high school and
others other schools here locally
including my alma mater finneytown high
school so what's next well we are
continuing with village life to be in
the process of learning from the
communities in which we serve this is
Edson he is a professor and
design-thinking at the University of
Cincinnati involving the community and
our strategic planning as an
organization and hearing from them that
yes doc we've worked on education and
typically that work is meant for the
school children but we as adults your
committee members we want access to
adult education our farmers want to be
better farmers can you help us with that
our mothers who may not be employed want
to do some small business enterprise can
you help us with that
can you help teach us and we'll help
teach you you want to bring some
Tanzanian students to Cincinnati to
learn not just for their own sake but so
all the students in Cincinnati can learn
from them we have offices in the 1819
innovation hub this is UC partnering
with some world renowned companies
innovative thinkers to look at how are
we thinking and how are we learning from
each other and how can we apply that
learning to solve real-world problems
people have always asked me Chris you
always say that you've learned a lot
from people and you've had a lot of
accomplishments with your work in
Tanzania what is the single most
important accomplishment to you and this
is what I show them this is the first
baby born at the health center that we
built in Roche a village in partnership
with the community after we learned from
them how to do it properly so that women
don't have to make that 8-hour walk
anymore and that is what it looks like
bi-directional learning at its finest
going to yes do and serve and answer
that question what are you doing for
others but also thinking about that
other question what are you learning
from others thank