Timmy Global Health
Timmy Global Health (formerly The Timmy Foundation) is an Indianapolis-based registered 501(c)3 nonprofit that works to expand access to healthcare and providing students and volunteers the opportunity to engage directly in global development. In collaboration with its international and US partners, it facilitates medical brigades and channels financial, medical, and human resources to community-based projects in the countries where it is present. It presently works with high school chapters in Indianapolis, many university chapters throughout the United States, and has ACTIVE projects with international partners in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Nigeria.
Founder
The founder and President of Timmy Global Health, Dr. Chuck Dietzen is a specialist in pediatric physical medicine and rehabilitation. He grew up in Kokomo, Indiana, and his parents fostered over 150 foster.
In 1996 and 1997, Dietzen traveled to India on orthopedic missions working alongside Mother Teresa. Dietzen founded the Timmy Foundation in 1997, naming it after his brother who died in infancy.
Dietzen earned his Bachelors Degree in Agriculture from Purdue University and his Doctor of Medicine from Indiana University. He received his training as a pediatric physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at the University of Alabama Birmingham. He currently practices at St. Frances Hospital and Easter Seals Crossroads, where he also serves as Medical Director.
Objectives
The objectives of Timmy Global Health are:
- To provide direct medical assistance and healthcare services to low-income communities in the developing world through short-term medical brigades
- To strengthen partner organizations by providing them with the financial, medical, in-kind, and human resources required to build their capacity and strengthen their missions, outreach, and impact
- To foster global awareness and humanitarian values in its students and volunteers by empowering them to actively engage in global development
Health programming
Timmy’s health programming seeks to utilize the symbiotic relationship between short and long-term efforts. While recognizing that short-term medical brigades (focused on family medicine and located in marginal or remote locations) are limited in their ability to provide a wider scope of healthcare access, the organization believes that these efforts paired with longer term commitments to partner organizations and individual communities can improve health outcomes in a systematic, sustainable, and profound fashion. With an increased focus on the responsibility and quality of its health efforts, Timmy attempts to take its week-long medical brigades and complement them with year-round funding to partner organizations.
Pairing short-term medical brigades with long-term capacity-building
Within the realm of health, Timmy Global Health bridges each of its university, student-led chapters with one of its established international health partners – organizations that are working year-round to expand access to healthcare for underserved communities. Each student chapter is responsible for a 52-week commitment to raising funds for their partner; procuring many over-the-counter medicines for a medical brigade; and advocating on behalf of their partner organization, Timmy Global Health, the communities we serve, and global health issues in general. Utilizing this approach, the organization is able to:
- Provide direct medical care to underserved patients in the developing world through short-term medical brigades;
- Channel financial, medical, in-kind, and human resources to our international partners;
- Empower students to lead the efforts, become more dedicated humanitarians, and develop a lifelong passion for service.
Timmy Global Health staff coordinates the work of its student chapters and complements their work with additional fundraising, medicine procurement, supply warehousing, strategic partnerships, and overall programming improvements. Throughout the year, the foundation’s staff, volunteers, and generous network of supporters are dedicated to improving the outreach of its partner organizations and expanding health care access to the patients we serve.
Community adoption
Recognizing the irresponsibility of “one-hit wonder” brigade organizations, Timmy Global Health has adopted specific communities in Ecuador and Guatemala—selected for their limited access to healthcare—with the aim of providing consistent care to those in need. Medical teams are sent in a year-round continuum to each of these selected communities, evenly spaced in two-to-three month intervals. With time, the hope is to improve the overall health outcomes in each of the adopted communities and provide a long-term, sustainable source of healthcare.
52-week presence
In order to promote greater sustainability, Timmy Global Health has organized a year-round presence in each of the countries it serves. Medical teams travel every two-to-three months to the same communities, allowing the foundation to care for the chronically ill and track patients over time. The foundation also employs on-the-ground coordinators to serve as liaisons to its partner organizations, community leaders, and patients.
Patient tracking system
Timmy Global Health now creates patient histories to track patients over time. Medical professionals are able to reference patient intake forms from previous clinic visits to make more informed diagnostic decisions and assess patient progress. The tracking system also allows the following of chronic patients who need longitudinal care and a steady supply of medicines. Timmy uses the data collected to help evaluate the impact of the organization's programming.
Critical referral systems
The scope of care provided during short-term brigades is limited. To compliment the attention provided in its medical clinics, Timmy Global Health has established critical referral systems that provide patients in need of more advanced diagnostic testing, treatment, or surgery with specialized consultations at its partner institutions or local hospitals. The organization subsidizes the costs of these consultations to further decrease patients’ barrier to healthcare access. Over the years, the organization has made a number of modifications to its programming that has increased the referral system’s the effectiveness. In 2008, recognizing that many patients failed to follow-through with their referral consultation and/or treatment, the foundation instituted a community busing system. Following a medical brigade, buses were sent to each adopted community to transport referred patients to and from our partner organization. Additional modifications are currently being tested to improve follow-up attrition.
International outreach
Timmy Global Health has six dynamic partnerships in three developing nations—Ecuador, Guatemala, and Nigeria.
Quito, Ecuador
Tierra Nueva is a large nonprofit organization founded by the late Father José Carollo, an Italian priest. A relentless advocate for the poor, Father Carollo began Tierra Nueva as a social services center for Quito’s poorest citizens—many of whom are concentrated in the southern half of Ecuador’s capital city. At present, the foundation consists of an outpatient medical institute with 26 specialties, a fully functioning medical hospital, a mobile medical unit, a school for developmentally disabled youth, two daycare centers, a legal services center, a microcredit institution, and social work department. When Father Carollo died in May 2005, the Tierra Nueva Foundation Board of Directors pledged to complete the construction of Hospital Padre Carollo “Un Canto a la Vida,” the 148-bed hospital named in his honor—his final dream for Southern Quito. The hospital will ultimately serve a population exceeding 700,000. The Timmy Foundation medical brigades complement the Community Health Department’s outreach to the underserved, peripheral communities in South Quito, and our year-round, back-end financing subsidizes patient care and supports the ongoing construction of the new hospital.
Timmy Global Health’s on-the-ground work in Quito includes the adoption of barrios in South Quito—neighborhoods specifically chosen for their limitations to healthcare access and socioeconomic levels.
- La Cocha
- Victoria de la Fé Alta
- Santo Domingo de Cutuglagua, sectors I and II
- Hermandad
- San Blas I
- Venecia
- Musculos Rieles
Every two-to-three months Timmy Global Health sends a medical team to provide basic primary care in the adopted communities. Working with community leaders local health promoters, and representatives from Tierra Nueva, Timmy Global Health aims to provide care to the sickest and poorest in these communities, acting as both a healthcare provider and catchment for serious cases.
Patients in need of care beyond the capacity of our brigade clinics are referred to Tierra Nueva’s hospital where they can receive attention from any of 26 specialties, further diagnostic testing, imaging services, surgery, and/or more comprehensive longitudinal care.
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
Asociación Pop-Wuj is a collectively owned non-profit Spanish language school that promotes community care through a versatile collection of programs. Founded in 1992 as a Spanish-language school, Pop-Wuj took an innovative approach to language education by pairing instruction with immersion service opportunities that meet the needs of impoverished rural communities near Quetzaltenango. Today, Pop Wuj is a self-described “social program with language instruction.” Their current projects include a daycare center, “safe stove” building projects, reforestation and ecological education, a student scholarship program, and most recently a health program. The health program incorporates a part-time clinic based out of Pop Wuj in Quetzaltenango, mobile medical teams that travel to rural villages, and public health education projects.
Timmy Global Health's medical brigades complement the mobile teams that Pop Wuj sends on a regular basis to impoverished, rural villages near Quetzaltenango. Working with Pop Wuj, the Timmy Foundation has adopted three communities to which it provides basic primary care services on each medical brigade, roughly every two-to-three months. These communities include:
- Pujijil
- Xeabaj – a community displaced by Hurricane Stan
- Buena Vista
- Chiriquiachec
Patients in need of care beyond the capacity of the medical brigades are referred to Pop Wuj’s social service worker, who then assists the patient in finding a local health institution from which to seek more comprehensive care. Timmy Global Health subsidizes the costs that referred patients incur.
Timmy also recently developed a partnership with Partner for Surgery, a Guatemala-based organization that provides free surgeries to patients throughout Guatemala. Patients identified on Timmy's international medical brigades qualify for free surgeries through this partnership and can receive the surgeries they need for free or for a significantly reduced rate. To learn more about a recent Timmy patient who received treatment through Partner for Surgery.
Timmy Global Health also sends its high school volunteers to Guatemala to assist Pop Wuj’s “safe stove” building projects. Smoke inhalation from the use of indoor, open-flame stoves is the second leading cause of death among children and one of the largest public health concerns among adults in Guatemala. Alongside our partner, Pop Wuj, Timmy sends high school volunteers to support the construction of safe stoves in its adopted communities in Guatemala.
Rivers State, Nigeria
The Bebor Model Nursery and Primary School (BMNPS) was founded in the rural village of Bodo City, Rivers State, Nigeria in 1995 as a response to the failure of the Nigerian government to maintain viable primary schools in the region. What began as a class of four students and one teacher housed in St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Bodo City has now grown to include over 1,000 students on two campuses. When the number of pupils swelled to more than 200 in year 2000, a grant from the Canadian consulate in Lagos, Nigeria enabled it to begin construction on its first school building. The Canadian funding subsidized 80% of the construction costs, but was not sufficient to complete the entire building. Scott Pegg, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at IUPUI (in Indianapolis), first visited the Niger Delta in April 2000 on a research trip and met officials from the school. By 2008, fundraising efforts by Dr. Pegg, his wife Tijen, and the International Friends Committee of BMNPS has allowed the community-based schools to expand to six buildings, construct latrines and a procure a generator, and establish a scholarship program for those students most in need. Timmy Global Health continues to work alongside Dr. Pegg and his wife to support BMNPS, and is currently poised to expand the school’s health related interventions.
Local outreach
Medical supply warehouse
In line with its mission of expanding access to health care resources, the organization utilizes its medical warehouse to broker medical supplies to free or subsidized clinics within the Indianapolis community, as well as other Indianapolis-based global health organizations. Supplies include wheelchairs, walkers, braces, respiratory supplies, feeding tube materials, and simple surgical supplies.
Medical explorers curriculum
Developed by the founder of Timmy Global Health, Dr. Chuck Dietzen, and several local science teachers and key members of Timmy’s network, the Medical Explorers Curriculum aims to heighten interest in science, specifically medicine, among high school-aged students. Because the program also incorporates case studies of real Timmy Global Health patients, it teaches important cultural lessons, global mindedness, and service to the poor. The unique program was successfully piloted several years ago and remains as a priority among Timmy’s local outreach.
College chapters
Timmy Global Health is involved with many college students and has 18 chapters with different universities around the United States.
- Ball State University
- Bellarmine University
- Boise State University
- Butler University
- Colorado State University
- Davidson College
- DePauw University
- Indiana University
- Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
- Ponce School of Medicine
- Purdue University
- Tufts University
- Truman State University
- University of Colorado at Boulder
- University of Louisville
- University of Notre Dame
- University of South Florida
- University of the Sciences
- Washington University
High school chapters
Timmy Global Health also supports a once-yearly high school service trip to our partner organization in Guatemala serving the safe stove project at Pop Wuj. Five Indianapolis area high schools currently participate in this initiative, including:
- Park Tudor School
- Brebeuf High School
- Cathedral High School
- International School of Indiana
- North Central High School