Letter from the President
Letter from president Lowell Bryan.
Dear Friends,
Since our last newsletter, we have made remarkable progress. We have significant momentum, with nearly $13 million in pledges and donations to date and comparable growth projections. This edition of our newsletter details a number of exciting developments, so I’ll summarize around two key themes: knowledge and partnership.
Knowledge
McKinsey & Company recently completed a four month pro bono study of Tanzania’s health worker crisis for the Touch Foundation. Including significant field work, this effort has helped us develop our longer-term strategy for addressing the scarcity of health care workers in Tanzania. Our work is to focus on expanding BUCHS into a center of excellence for health-worker training for all of East Africa, building new schools, and helping other existing schools to grow to full capacity.
The McKinsey team’s findings were revealed in a prerelease draft report at our second symposium in early June, where various leaders from the public health community shared their insights. We are very grateful to the participants for their thoughts and contributions, as well as McKinsey for its mammoth support in both resources and staff for the study. A copy of the McKinsey report is available on our website, www.touchfoundation.org.
Partnership
Our success to date is testament to the power of partnership. We have been able to forge some critical alliances in recent months. In May, a delegation of the Touch leadership, including myself, visited Tanzania and met with the President and key ministers to discuss our plans for improving the health care workforce. At that meeting, President Kikwete offered his full support of our work and will be drafting an official letter of endorsement. A few weeks later, Tanzanian Prime Minister Edward Lowassa called a meeting with us in New York, where he echoed their president’s support.
I am also pleased to announce the signing of an official affiliation agreement between Weill Cornell Medical College, New York Presbyterian Hospital, BUCHS, and BMC. Equally exciting is the official partnering of BUCHS and BMC, whose leaders signed an agreement to share all staff, equipment, and resources.
In New York, our team has been substantially enhanced by the addition in April of Angus O’Shea as our new COO. Angus comes from McKinsey with significant expertise in management, and we are already seeing the benefits of his work on our organization and direction.
Our partnership with Sandy Weill and Citigroup continues to deepen, as mentioned on page 1, and we look forward to a long and productive relationship.
Lastly, I want to thank everyone who attended our Asante Supper dinner in January. With your help, we raised nearly $700,000 in support of BUCHS. Individual support is critical for the success of our efforts, and we look forward to a continued partnership with you as we implement our newly-refined strategy.
We have come a long way in our year and a half of operation. But there is much work ahead of us. Thank you for helping make our aspirations for a healthier Africa a reality.
Warmest regards,
Lowell Bryan