Healthcare

FHM’s mission is to support Haitian communities in ‘their efforts‘ to build and sustain healthy families.

 FHM accomplishes this mission by supporting local Haitian-run healthcare efforts, which includes builing infrastructure, hiring staff and collecting data on healthcare outcomes.  FHM’s Haitian staff offer a variety of services, with an emphasis on women, children and hypertension. We are best known for advances in cervical cancer prevention.  FHM performs quality improvement exercises to determine the best strategies to provide health care and then collaborates with other organizations to create health networks and scale up services across communities.

Cervical Cancer Prevention

In 1993, the seeds of FHM were planted when Dr. David Walmer began supporting Dr. Jean Claude Fertillien’s efforts to reduce the burden of cervical cancer in Haiti.  That clinical research program has evaluated different screening and treatment strategies and screened over 30,000 Haitian women, which led to the co-founding of Haiti sans Cervical Cancer in 2015.

Preventative Healthcare 

In 2016, FHM opened the Carmelle Voltaire Women’s Health Center (CVWHC) in the rural mountain community of Tom Gato to provide maternal / child and preventative health care services to the Leogane and Jacmel communes.   The vision for this center resulted from a community survey of unmet needs.  The CVWHC provides comprehensive women’s health care including prenatal care, 24/7 labor and delivery services, postnatal care and cervical cancer prevention care.  The center is staffed by a part-time Ob/Gyn, Family Nurse Practitioner, skilled birth attendants and nurses.  Patients needing advanced emergency care can be transported to either Leogane or Jacmel.  However, FHM has raised the funds to build a surgical suite.

Nursing Education

In 2004, FHM began supporting a nursing school that was started in Leogane in 2004 through a collaboration between Hôpital St. Croix, the U. of Michigan School of Nursing and the Medical Benevolence Foundation.  Over the years, FHM has incorporated FSIL nursing students in clinical research activities, provided nursing scholarships, provided opportunities for clinical rotations and hired nursing graduates to serve in the community.  FHM is proud to have hired one of the first Family Nurse Practitioners to be trained in Haiti.