I think the personal satisfaction of doing good in the community and increasing value and holding true to the Hippocratic oath and being able to provide services to those that are in need is very strong moral reason to provide services for the underserved.
We need policymakers to keep an eye on gender and write policies that are explicitly designed to include underserved populations like girls in computer science courses.
Africa is not for the weak-hearted: infrastructure issues are there. The middle class is absent in most of the countries. We have to cater to the low end of the market to grow.
Medical disenfranchisement is fueled by a host of factors that include worsening shortage of primary care doctors in needy communities and a troubling scarcity of providers willing to treat the uninsured or publicly insured. Adding to the trend are fewer medical students choosing primary care over more lucrative and specialized fields.
Market mechanisms are totally irrelevant when resources are used to serve a larger purpose, especially for the underserved, unserved, or marginalised.
In Illinois, community, migrant, homeless and public housing health centers operate 268 primary care sites and serve close to 1 million patients every year.
My interest generally is the hidden Americans; the ones who live far away from the headlines.
So much talent comes from the base of poverty and those in the margins. You limit the base, you miss too much talent.
Community health centers do a great deal with limited resources. They provide critical medical care services to many who would otherwise have no other place to go or would end up in an emergency room.
We all have people who are literally one life shock away from going into a crisis. For many of us, we have a buffer in one way or another. We have a savings account, or we have credit that we can go to. The underserved don't have that luxury.
Today, Wilberforce University welcomes many of America's poorest and most underserved populations and transforms their educational dreams into realities.
