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Summer Griffin
CES Paper
11/2/2015 - Draft
Partners in Health Engage at UNCA: Promoting global health through advocacy,
education, and fundraising
Background/Origins of the Project:
6.6 million children under the age of die each year (WHO, 2014). Every day, 16,000 of
the child deaths that occur are preventable (Nantanda, 2015). About 70% of all
HIV/AIDs deaths occur in sub-saharan Africa. Everyday, about 800 women die of
complications of pregnancy and birth (WHO, 2014).
In 2011, Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of the global health organization Partners in Health
(PIH) stated that “ten million people — many of them young and most of them poor — will
die around the world this year from diseases for which safe, effective and affordable
treatments exist. In Haiti, these are known as ‘stupid deaths.” (Preventing “Stupid Deaths”
in Poor Countries Around the World, 2011). Dr. Farmer expands his discussion of “stupid
deaths” in his book Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on
the Poor. In this book, Farmer explains how “stupid deaths” are deaths that occur
needlessly and as a result of valuing some lives less than others (Farmer, 2003).
In 1987, a group of remarkable doctors, including Dr. Farmer, founded Partners in Health
hoping to decrease the prevalence of these “stupid deaths” and to address the systems that
allow them to occur. The mission of PIH is to “provide a preferential option for the poor
in health care.” PIH does this by partnering with community organizations to create
sustainable and holistic solutions to local health crisis and concerns. They currently serve
in ten countries where they focus on eleven different priority programs, such as maternal
and child health, HIV/AIDS, and community health workers. (Partner’s in Health,
pih.org).
The work PIH has completed has been incredibly effective on the ground (Partners in
Health (PIH) | GiveWell, 2012). This is a result of the community health focus abroad, as
well as the policy advocacy completed in the United States. In 2011, PIH decided that
there was energy and passion in the US that could be harnessed to further the work being
done globally. In response to this, PIH Engage was formed. PIH Engage works to “build
the right to health movement by recruiting, training, and enabling teams of dedicated
volunteer community organizers.” (PIH Engage). PIH Engage works through grassroots
campaigns to build/educate community, raise funds, and advocate for the right to health
movement.
There are currently over 100 PIH Engage clubs all throughout the US. Each of these
teams are either community or university based and are made up of a community
coordinator, a community building lead, an advocacy lead, and a fundraising lead. This
structure allows each group to share leadership and delegate tasks. It also enables the
National PIH Engage staff to effectively train and communicate with each group. All

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groups are closely tied with one another and with the National team’s agenda (PIH
Engage).
PIH Engage - Asheville was founded in 2013 as a community team, made up mostly of
interested young professionals. In the spring of 2015, PIH Engage - Asheville worked
with service learning students from UNCA. It was from this partnership that the idea of
creating a UNCA based team was born. As it currently stood, there were no UNCA clubs
working specifically to promote global health. There are also very few classes that offer a
discussion of global health and health disparities. Meanwhile, we believe that there is a
potential for a lot of student interest and activism related to these topics. UNCA student
body has proven itself to be civically minded and politically active. The point of our
project is to harness these energies into promoting the right to health movement with PIH
Engage.
School-based organizations have often times acted as a catalyst to community change.
Whether it be anti-apartheid groups in South Africa or anti-war activist here in the US,
Universities have provided the necessary structure to organize young people and to
effectively advocate for change (Ramphele, 1996). Our project has been to develop a
sustainable UNCA-based PIH Engage team to work in conjunction with the PIH -
Asheville team. In addition, we have been putting together a recruitment and retention
guide that is specific to building a PIH Engage team. This guide will help others
interested in starting a PIH Engage team by providing concrete and effective steps to
recruitment and retention of leaders and members. This project is particularly helpful in
that global health can sometimes be a difficult topic for individuals to relate to and to see
how their potential impact. We hope to make those understandings more accessible at
UNCA as well as for potential new PIH Engage groups.
Methods and Work Undertaken:
By the time I began my involvement in PIH Engage - Asheville, two other students had
already begun working with our community coordinator. With me on board, we had the
perfect number for leadership in a PIH Engage group. Hannah took on the role of
Community Building Lead, Mariah undertook that of Fundraising Lead, and I was
excited to be the Advocacy Lead. We began over the summer crafting our mission,
vision, and protocol.
In August, Mariah and I traveled with our team coordinator to Boston for the 4th annual
Partner’s in Health Engage Training Institute. Here, we had the opportunity to network
with hundreds of individuals across the country involved in PIH Engage. We attended
training on PIH and PIH Engage history, history of aid, advocacy work, fundraising
work, and community organizing. At the training institute, our roles as leads were more
clearly defined.
As the advocacy lead, I am tasked with training and coordinating our internal advocacy
team and with keeping our team on-track with the national PIH Engage advocacy
priorities. I am expected to watch webinars on advocacy techniques (a few times a

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month) and to join in on monthly conference calls with other advocacy leads and our
coach from the national team (Advocacy Lead Manual, 2015).
In addition to my role as advocacy lead, I work alongside Hannah and Mariah in
recruiting, retaining, and coordinating our team on UNCA campus. We have recruited
through several different methods including: tabling at events, holding our own recruiting
events, and one-on-one meetings.
The following timeline represents our efforts in creating a student chapter of PIH
Engage- Asheville:
9/18/2015 - “Changing the World” Chancellor expo – tabling for recruitment
9/20/2015 – PIH Engage Retreat – making a plan for the year
9/24/2015 – Global Health Mini-film festival – educational event + recruitment
9/25/2015 – 10/11/2015
● One-on-ones with potential team members
● Additional training in Advocacy (Summer) and Community Education
(Hannah) from Nat’l team
○ In the form of calls/webinars/online resources
● Submit club’s recognition form and advisor recognition form to Key
Center
10/12/2015 – First PIH Engage UNC-Asheville team meeting
● Begin planning 1st
advocacy event ( LTE’s about appropriations for
PEPFAR and Global Health Fund)
10/13/2015 – Submit PIH Engage UNC-Asheville constitution
10/20/2015 - Host a talk with Dr. Rebecca Nantanda from Uganda
10/26/2015 PIH Engage UNC-Asheville team meeting
● Letter to the Editor writing campaign - in response to pieces published
about Dr. Nantanda. Encouraging support for increased funding for
PEPFAR and the Global Fund, as well as for the REACH bill.
11/9/2015 – PIH Engage UNC-Asheville team meeting
● Make fundraising pages and videos for Grassroots Giving Challenge - all
proceeds will go to implementing innovative tuberculosis treatment in
Lima, Peru.
11/20/2015 – Complete a “How to Create University Based PIH Engage Team”
11/23/2015 – PIH Engage UNC-Asheville team meeting
11/30/2015 – We will have created a sustainable PIH Engage UNC-Asheville team
Challenges Faced and Responses to those Challenges:

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This project began over the summer with enthusiasm and energy from all parties. With
lighter schedules and the excitement encouraged through our training, our leadership
team was confident that we could not only establish our on-campus club, but also host a
good number of events in the coming year. We believed that our passion would allow us
to easily recruit and retain other individuals into PIH Engage-Asheville. As the semester
began, we started to see how difficult recruitment and retention can really be.
Students are busy and often stressed. They want to know that any extra work they are
doing is firstly; actually impactful, and secondly; going to be a positive learning
experience for them. Having gone through all the training over the summer, we took for
granted the amount of information necessary to fully comprehend not only the problems
behind disparities in health globally, but also the solutions. This barrier made it difficult
to draw students into the cause and to keep them engaged.
It seems difficult to understand how global health concerns affect an individual
seemingly so far away from the concern. It can especially be difficult to see how said
individual can influence positive change in global health. Without experience in
advocacy work, one’s participation can often seem futile on such large issues. To address
this, we each created “stories of self”, our personal stories of how we got involved with
the cause. These stories allowed us to connect with individuals we are recruiting and
helps others understand how our values, many of which they share, are being expressed
through PIH Engage. Another method we used to address this concern, was through
delegation of leadership to our new members. This allows for ownership of the work we
doing and helps empower everyone on our team to see how they are contributing
members.
Project Outcomes & Sustainability:
Although PIH Engage is made up of both community and university based teams, the
majority tend to be university based. This is likely because university based teams have
structure and resources not available to a community team. Often times, university based
teams have strong ties to academia which can sustain active membership, whereas the
professionals involved in community teams are often stretched thin on time to begin with.
For these reasons, we believe that a UNCA based team will help to sustain PIH Engage in
Asheville. Once we have established it as a club, created positions, planned elections,
etc…, the momentum will be continued by a constant influx of students looking to direct
their skills and passion. In addition, this club will provide a much needed focus on global
health and health disparities, something which is currently largely missing on the UNCA
campus.
In addition to creating a sustainable club, we are working on a PIH Engage recruitment
and retention guide. As was previously discussed. global health disparities can sometimes
be a difficult topic to get students to rally behind. This could be a result of desensitization
to global concerns (caused by overexposure without information), a lack of relatability to
problems happening far away, and/or the belief that one could not actually have an effect
on such large problems. These difficulties cause a unique situation for groups trying to
begin a PIH Engage team. We hope that by collecting techniques that have been

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successful for us and combining them with what we have learned from other established
teams, we can make the process easier for future teams. The idea for this guide grew out
of conversations with other teams about their needs.
As a community-engaged scholar, this project has had a large impact on me. PIH Engage
has provided me with incredibly valuable training on advocacy, community organizing,
and global health disparities. It has widened my understanding and appreciation of the
effectiveness of grassroots campaigns and increased my feelings of empowerment and
self-efficacy. I intend to continue these lessons through continued work with PIH Engage
and with work I complete in the future. I will continue to work with PIH Engage
throughout the rest of my time at UNCA (May 2016) and the following summer. I am
currently applying to complete a fellowship with PIH in Malawi from June 2016 - June
2017. Whether or not I receive this fellowship, I hope to continue to participate with PIH
Engage in whatever city I end up in and to hopefully work more extensively with them as
a young professional.
Ties to Academia:
The first criticism of charity work I ever encountered was an article entitled “7 Worst
International Aid Ideas” (Stupart, 2012). In this piece, the author brought attention to
many of the economic, political, and social impacts of certain international aid
organizations and techniques. Up until this point, I hadn’t yet learned to question any
work completed with positive intention.
This perspective led me into critical thinking about the service I had spent much of my
life involved in. By the time I picked up Dr. Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power: Health,
Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor two years later, I had a well-developed
understanding of the complexities of aid and some of what I considered misgivings in the
savior complex of the wealthy (whether it be individuals or nations). Dr. Farmer offered a
reproachful review of human rights work that was refreshing and encouraging in terms of
the possibilities of reshaping the way the world does aid. A popular quote by Dr. Farmer
“the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world” has
been used by a variety different rights organizations (including animal rights). As nice as
this quote is, I believe that it just scrapes the top of the iceberg of the philosophy behind
Partners In Health which challenges the way the world views health care and aid.
PIH confronts the modern understanding of aid, human rights, and large-scale health
interventions (A Social Justice Approach to Global Health, 2015). They are committed to
changing the way the world responds to health needs and are doing so by implementing
innovative interventions. This is exactly the type of work I would like to be involved in.
My time in the Health and Wellness Promotion department of UNCA has been largely
spent understanding how the health topics we are discussing influence, and are influenced
by health disparities. Prior to studying at UNCA, I worked with a North Carolina non
profit Youth Empowered Solutions (YES!), which fights for social justice in health
through advocacy, education, and youth empowerment. This work prepared me with a
lens which attempts to see the root causes of health concerns. My work with YES! sent

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me to UNCA to further my education, so as to become a more effective health equity
advocate. After I leave UNCA, I will continue on my education either through a master’s
program in public health, or through medical school.
My ultimate goal is to work under whatever capacity I can to be most helpful in fighting
for everyone’s right to health. PIH Engage is giving me an amazing opportunity to learn
about the in’s and out’s of global health policy and interventions. This work continues to
challenge me by forcing the me to question my knowledge, intent, and perceptions.
Conclusion:
One of my most favorite quotes regarding change is one by Dr. Loshini Naidoo stating “if
we can make a difference in the life of one person in a community, it is a small, yet
significant step in empowering the whole community.” With this philosophy in hand, I
believe that every step towards social justice turns into a giant leap. Working with PIH
Engage has encouraged me to continue with whatever small steps I may have to
contribute. The take away message from this work is that through empowerment and
advocacy the lives of the millions of underprivileged individuals can be changed. PIH is
working to do so through sustainable and direct interventions to global health disparities.
The work we are doing exists not only to enable these interventions, but also to change
the way we view health care from that of it being a privilege held by only a few, to a
fundamental universal right owned by all. In doing so, our global society can find itself in
a new era where all lives are valued equally and have equal access to health care. Hannah
and I are passionate about fighting for the world’s right to health care. Through this
project, we have been given the opportunity to use our privilege and skills to advocate for
global health access and to encourage our fellow students to do the same. Our project will
hopefully enable other’s like us to more easily participate and will create a center for
conversation and action on global at UNCA and in the Asheville community.
As Paul Farmer said: “Supporters of global health equity do not need to hold official
positions of power to make a significant impact. Students, health workers, lawyers,
people living with HIV, and other grassroots activists have changed global health policy
through effective advocacy; their tactics are available to anyone with a passion for
equity” ( Farmer, P., Kleinman, A., Kim, J., & Basilico, M., 2013).

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References
Advocacy Lead Manual. (2015). Retrieved November 2, 2015, from
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/pihengage/pages/353/attachments/original
/1439385770/CBL_Manual_0815_Final.pdf?1439385770
A Social Justice Approach to Global Health. (2015). Retrieved November 2, 2015, from
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/pihengage/pages/340/attachments/original
/1439406304/A_Social_Justice_Approach_to_Global_Health.pdf?1439406304
Farmer, P., Kleinman, A., Kim, J., & Basilico, M. (Eds.). (2013). Reimagining global
health (p. 504). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Farmer, P. (2003). Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on
the Poor (p. 438). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nantanda, R. (2015, October 20). A Dialogue with Dr. Nantanda [Personal interview]
Partners in Health (PIH) | GiveWell. (2012). Retrieved November 2, 2015, from
http://www.givewell.org/international/charities/PIH
Partners In Health. (2015). Retrieved November 2, 2015, from http://www.pih.org/
PIH Engage. (2015). Retrieved November 2, 2015, from http://engage.pih.org/
Preventing “stupid deaths” in poor countries around the world. (2011, November 18).
Retrieved November 2, 2015, from http://www.pih.org/blog/preventing-stupid-
deaths-in-poor-countries-around-the-world
Ramphele, M. (1996). Across Boundaries. New York: The Feminist Press.
Stupart, R. (2012, February 20). 7 Worst International Aid Ideas. Retrieved November 3,
2015.
WHO. 10 Facts on the State of Global Health. (2014, June 1). Retrieved November 2,
2015, from
http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/global_burden/facts/en/index1.html