The Story  In 2006, Yale medical student Jason Andrews traveled to Far-Western Nepal with his wife, a photographer working on a documentary about those affected by HIV. When they arrived, they instead found themselves in a situation of multiple crises in Achham District – where 260,000 people lived without a doctor, infrastructure was destroyed by a 10-year civil war, and families were torn apart by migration of men to India to find work. Upon return, Jason worked with his close friends at Yale Medical School, Duncan Maru and Sanjay Basu to create change in this region everyone else had forgotten. They remained determined to build an effective, durable organization rooted in the philosophy of “nyaya” (knee-eye-uh) or “the realization of just systems.” This vision began to be realized in 2008 when the three were joined by a growing global team of leaders – from Nepal, India, and the U.S. – to transform an abandoned grain shed into a beautiful clinic operated by Nepali health care providers using a small sum of funding from friends and family. In May 2009, Nyaya turned over operation of the Sanfe Bagar Medical Clinic to the Nepali government. On June 21, 2009, Nyaya opened Bayalpata Hospital (shown below), where the organization’s work now centers.

Mission Nyaya Health works to realize the right to health by delivering transparent, data driven health care for Nepal’s poor.

Far-Western Nepal Statistics • 231,285 population of Achham • 0 doctors in Achham before Nyaya arrived • 38.7% of people must walk longer than 3 hours to get to the nearest public hospital or health center • 63.5% of children had stunted growth in 2011 • 10 of deliveries were facilitated by trained professionals • 8.6% of migrant workers have ever had an HIV test# • 50¢ average daily per capita income in Achham

Meet our Partner

Community Health Program Nyaya Health’s community health workers (CHWs) accompany patients across the emotional, educational, and literal distance to health in irreplaceable ways. The Community Health Program was designed to enhance the existing Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHV) program sponsored by the Nepali government. The creation of salaried Community Health Worker Leaders (CHWLs) dramatically improved coordination, training, and reporting between clinicians and programs staff at Bayalpata Hospital and CHWs in the villages. CHWs constitute mobile teams providing outreach, triage, treatment and follow-up services to a geographically dispersed population. CHWs also play a critical role in Nyaya Health by providing disease surveillance, data reporting, patient referrals, patient education, and basic care. During the 2011-2012 school year, GlobeMed at Tufts funded the expansion of the Community Health Program to two additional Village Development Committees (VDCs), representing an increase in services to almost 2% of Achham’s population. Currently, the Community Health Program consists of a total of 9 CHWLs (one for each VDC) and 92 FCHVs.

Campaigns and Projects

November for Nyaya In November 2011, Nyaya Health launched its nov4nyaya campaign. Individuals with November birthdays had the opportunity to reach out to friends and family to donate to Nyaya’s efforts to tile all of the the clinical facilities in Bayalpata Hospital. The idea spiraled into a general birthdays campaign with a total of 31 individuals donating their birthdays to Nyaya by July 2012. Nov4nyaya will continue with a focus on a different project in 2012.

Mothers’ Day Campaign In May 2011, Nyaya Health held a Mothers’ Day cards campaign inviting individuals to send email gift cards with 100% of the profits going toward Nepal programs.

A Nyaya Health Community Health Worker Leader running a hand washing tutorial

The Beginning During the summer of 2011, the three GlobeMed at Tufts Co-Presidents – Kanu Tewari, Laura Corlin, and Hafsa Chaudhry – were given a list of 17 potential partner organizations identified only by their country of work and mission statement. Taking into consideration interests of Tufts students, the organizations’ missions, and Kanu’s prior relationship with Nyaya Health through a Partners in Health internship, they easily ranked Nyaya Health first. Once the GlobeMed National Office confirmed the partnership, the co-presidents collaborated with the new Nyaya Health Executive Director, Mark Arnoldy, to develop the memorandum of understanding with Nyaya Health and set goals for the founding year of the partnership.

Events and Campaigns Over the course of the year, GlobeMed at Tufts held several events to fundraise for Nyaya, established a presence on campus and spread Nyaya’s message throughout the community. Over winter break, the chapter launched an individual giving campaign that ultimately raised almost $1580 for Nyaya. During the spring semester, two of our chapter members donated their birthdays to Nyaya, raising a total of $1084. We raised additional funds from our campaigns throughout the year, including an awareness campaign called Nourishing Nepal and the TASA Culture Show. In total, we raised $6440 which was sufficient to fund the expansion of the CHP into two new VDC’s with a total population of over 4100 people and to fund $500 for the solar energy projects.

Partnership Overview

GROW U.S. A unique and integral part of our partnership has been the domestic GROW program. During the Spring 2012 semester, 3 GlobeMed executive board members and one staff member were able to devote roughly 10-12 hours in the Boston office accomplishing a variety of functions directly for Nyaya. The domestic GROW program is one of the predominant ways our chapter directly contributed to Nyaya Health during our founding year. It gave our unique insight into Nyaya’s domestic operations. Towards the end of second semester, we began having the interns report briefly on their work and Nyaya’s progress in each staff meeting. Communication between our chapter and Nyaya Health was also largely accomplished through the interns and continues through Summer 2012 with the internships of two executive board members and one staff member at the Nyaya Health Boston office.   GROW Nepal In the first GROW international on-site experience, our chapter sent David Meyers and Laura Corlin to Achham for 8 weeks. Sindhya Rajeev, a Tufts MD/MPH student connected to Nyaya, joined the two GROW interns. Sindhya served as the Clinical Operations intern while David and Laura worked to improve coordination between the community health, clinical, and data departments through a variety of technological and systems-based initiatives. The GROW internship experience has provided a valuable bridge between Nyaya Health’s Nepal based work and GlobeMed at Tufts.

Left: Nyaya Health Boston office summer interns at a Praxis Network event; Below: GROW international interns near Bayalpata Hospital in Achham

New Faces of Global Health Panel event held by GlobeMed at Tufts in honor of World AIDS Day 2011