Keeping Artificial Limbs Low-Cost, and High-Quality

Project ECHO - driven by a single doctor with a cause - pulled together a team of specialists to develop a model that combines technology with collaborative care and careful patient tracking to help cure for diseases spread to patients around the world through community healthcare agents, as opposed to only specialty centers. This kind of "disruptive innovation" is effectively working to demonopolize health care knowledge and access, and lends to a health system capable of meeting today’s soaring demands for care.

At least 25 percent of female veterans were sexually abused in childhood, making it more difficult to reenter civilian life. Volunteers of America runs a holistic housing program for homeless veterans in the U.S.

The H.I.V. infection rate in San Francisco dropped drastically after the city increased testing and created programs like Rapid, which immediately offer public health insurance, antiretroviral drugs, and personal counselors for people with AIDS.

For decades, AIDS has taken the lives of millions of people and infected millions more worldwide. The key to reducing the effect of AIDS, and even potentially curing it, involves treating patients as early as possible after being diagnosed with HIV, before the disease damages organs. San Francisco General Hospital developed the RAPID program for this purpose, with the goal of “Getting to Zero” the number of new infections and deaths.

In light of a study published in BMC Medicine, authors Nancy Fullman and Alexandra Wollum take a deeper dive into Nigeria’s gains against polio and what they could mean for the country’s routine vaccine systems.

PrePex, a new nonsurgical circumcision tool, could revolutionize the prevention of H.I.V. and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Cheap and easy to assemble, the device has proven successful in several randomized trials.

The Jaipur Limb organization based in India has developed prostheses at low cost, and services are free for the poor. The organization’s efforts have recently spread to other countries with impoverished people. Jaipur Limb reaches patients through branch clinics, traveling workshops, and limb camps in cities around the world.

A prosthetist from Texas visiting Jaipur Limb workshops in Honduras saw problems with their low-cost prosthetics - the issue wasn't the design of the leg, but the technicians at the Honduras workshops were people completely new to prosthetics who were given just eight weeks of training. Thanks to his research, Jaipur established a research and development unit to improve the limb.

The U.S. prison population is aging, which is costly because older inmates need more care. Some states have responded by creating special wards, having the young inmates care for the old, or building nursing homes.

Native American student graduation rates are much lower than that of any other demographic. The Red Cloud school teaches students on a reservation in South Dakota about the Lakota history to empower the kids and encourage resilience.