Omni Med began in 1994, ironically enough because of an inability to find a way back to East Africa. I had worked in a mission hospital in Tanzania in 1987 (that medical ward is the background to this page) as a fourth year medical student at George Washington University. Seeing the poverty and suffering of so many was a transforming experience; I sought an opportunity to return. Once I had completed residency and paid back enough student loans to afford a return visit, I looked for the “book” that would guide me back to Africa. However, that book then did not exist. While working at Nairobi’s Nazareth Hospital in the winter of 1994, I began to envision a text that would decipher world orders of health inequality, list all of the organizations that sought medical personnel for overseas projects, and explain in a user-friendly manner exactly how one travels abroad and works effectively in poor communities. I also hoped to evoke icons like Albert Schweitzer, Tom Dooley and Paul Farmer to inspire a larger swath of health profession to serve. 

Upon my return from Kenya, I began a three-year Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship that afforded me the opportunity to study broadly and expand the scope of the text. One of the fellows in my group was Jim Yong Kim from Partners In Health. Jim introduced me to Paul Farmer, and thus became a lifelong interest on my part in the philosophy and approach that PIH took to this challenge of global health inequity. Omni Med was initially adopted as an NGO by PIH, and became a free-standing NGO in 1998. The PIH influence remains, and those who have worked with both organizations see readily the ongoing influence of Drs Kim and Farmer on all that we do.

The earliest quest was to write a book on health, poverty, and global service. However, simply researching and writing a text would not suffice. I wanted an opportunity to develop clinical programs directly overseas. In September 1997, MGH's Dr Tom Durant introduced me to an impressive group from the Hingham Rotary Club, including Richard Bridges, Harold Lincoln, Sheldon Daly and others. They invited Dr Durant and me to travel to Belize to advise them on their medical equipment donation program, which by that time had topped $1 million in equipment sent. We traveled throughout the country, and a number of health providers and government officials discussed the need for ongoing continuing medical education programs, of which there were none at the time. Upon my return home, Jim Kim referred an aspiring Harvard medical student named James Eadie to help set up the logistics for the program. Thus began the Belize Cooperative Medical Education Program, through which we sent physicians to Belize to 6-8 different sites around the country to teach their Belizean counterparts. (For details, please see Past Programs/ Belize elsewhere on this website.) The program lasted from 1999 to 2009, when the Belizean Medical and Dental Society developed their own solid educational program, making our work there no longer necessary. 

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The Program in Belize needed an NGO to coordinate it. During a visit to Boston, a great friend and role model, Dr Roger Sublett suggested that I form an NGO. He became the first board member and has served as an inspiration and guiding force ever since. Other board members, including Robert Sparks, Harry Barnes, Kathryn Johnson and Lessa Phillips have all had major influence on our direction and substance. My high school Latin Teacher, Samuel Demerit, then suggested a name, Omni Med, based, rather understandably, on an abbreviation of the Latin word Medicina (medicine, health), and Omni, literally translated as "for all." The words, loosely translated mean health for all.

From the success of our program in Belize, a health official from Guyana asked us to talk with the Guyanese Minister of Health, Dr Leslie Ramsammy. Dr Eadie, then a resident in Emergency Medicine at the combined Brigham and Women’s-MGH Program, traveled to Guyana in October 2002 and began to develop the Guyana Cooperative Health Education Program. Through multiple subsequent visits, Dr Eadie, along with Dr John O’Brien, developed an educational program in Guyana similar to the model in Belize. In June 2004, Dr John Varallo, an obstetrician who had traveled through the Omni Med Belize program one year earlier, traveled to Guyana. He found that the country had no screening program for the early lesions that can lead to cervical cancer. Since cervical cancer is the most frequent cancer associated with HIV—a huge problem in Guyana—Dr Varallo began develop a screening program with officials from the Ministry of Health and health personnel from JHPIEGO, based at Johns Hopkins University. In 2008, the program become a national model, and Dr Varallo and the program eventually migrated to JHPIEGO, where it remains still.