Mission
Together Through Community
Mission
HEAL (Health, Equity, Action, and Leadership) trains and transforms front line health professionals through building a community dedicated to serving the underserved as their lifelong choice.
Vision
At HEAL, we believe health is achievable for even the most vulnerable populations in our world when we apply principles of equity, justice, and solidarity.
We believe that people coming together can transform systems. Through the process, we also continue to be transformed.
Our Values
Humility
We don’t come with the answers. We come to immerse ourselves and open ourselves to sharing – giving and receiving – being self-reflective and aware of who we are in each environment.
Solidarity
We strive for equitable partnerships and the elevation of the communities where we live and work. We structure solidarity directly into our program, with half of our cohort coming from the underserved communities where HEAL works.
Health Equity
Equity is our foundational principle. We believe no one should die from diseases we know how to treat.
Responding to Structural Violence
In traditional medical education we are trained to ignore the reality that illness and premature death are heavily rooted in economic, educational, racial, and power inequities. At HEAL, we seek to impact both the patients in front of us, the communities we serve, and the larger structural violence our patients find themselves in.
Transforming Through Community
The conditions producing inequality are deep and systemic. It is only together through cohorts of colleagues, allies, and teams, that we can transform ourselves and create the momentum for lasting change.
Work is Everywhere
In Oakland, in the backdrop of HEAL offices, the Black Panthers took up the right to health as a natural extension of commitment to oppressed peoples. We chose to work in Navajo Nation, farmworker country in California, and in many marginalized communities, to accompany and serve the underserved everyday.
Immersion
We believe that the immersive and intensive experience of delivering care to underserved patients is our greatest teacher. We witness, serve, and stay. We witness deep injustices, and don’t look away.
Relentless Incrementalism
It has been said that change is slow, except when it’s fast. The arc of change comes from perseverance. Of showing up repeatedly and staying. It comes with understanding who came before you and collaborating with others who have been working long before HEAL started and will be there long after HEAL dissolves.
How We're Different
Bidirectional
We seek to disrupt colonial & unidirectional approaches to health education by ensuring half of our fellows in each cohort come from underserved communities.
Interprofessional
HEAL fellows range from physicians to program managers, pharmacists to nurses, behavioral health coaches to community health workers. We believe that diverse groups of health workers create better solutions.
Immersion
All fellows spend all their time during fellowship with the underserved, either in Navajo Nation, Salinas, California, or with partners in rural, low and middle income countries.
Building Partnerships
We partner with hospitals, and NGOs on the front line of the health equity movement -- organizations who deliver holistic and equity based health programs to the most marginalized.
Staying Power
We don’t believe short term, mission like fly in fly out care supports long term transformation. At HEAL, fellows commit two years to learning from and walking with local resource-denied hospitals and communities. Many fellows stay on after the fellowship.