Welcome to Lucie Pivnick, our inspiring speaker for the YLC 2015
Lucie Pivnick is a second year medical student at McMaster University. Â
She completed her B.A.&Sc. at McGill University in 2013 and her MSc. of Global Health at McMaster in 2014.Â
Lucieâs involvement at SACH began as a full-time volunteer at the Childrenâs Home in Tel Aviv in 2010. She continued her involvement as an executive member of the McGill SACH Club in Montreal. While on a field study, she helped complete follow-up interviews with former SACH patients in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Lucie returned to Israel during her Masters of Global Health to conduct research on SACH under the mentorship of Dr. Bernard Goldman, cardiac surgeon and former Chairman of the Canadian SACH Board.Â
Lucie co-authored the paper âMending Hearts and Building Bridges: The Save a Childâs Heart Foundation,â which was accepted for publication to the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. She recently joined Dr. Goldman in Chicago at the American Public Health Association Annual General Meeting & Exposition to present SACH as a model leading global health care initiative.
Title: Mending Hearts, Building Bridges: SACH at 20 years
Objectives: SACH addresses cardiac care for children in developing countries by establishing a center of excellence (WMC), creating partner referral sites and training medical teams to return to their communities to provide competent, sustainable local care. Of special interest is the cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Methods: The Heart of the Matter Project  (co-sponsored  by the EU, USAID, Israel Ministry for Regional Cooperation and the PA Ministry of Health ) improves cardiac care for children in the WB and Gaza, facilitates improved interaction between PA and Israeli physicians, convenes seminars for PA doctors at WMC and trains PA medical  teams to build their own capacity for local cardiac care.
Results: SACH has performed surgery on >3,600 children from 48 countries, 50% from Iraq, Jordan, the PA and Gaza (even during conflict) with increasing children from Syrian refugee camps. SACH has examined >6,000 children from the PA and Gaza and operated on 1,750 Palestinian children. SACH has trained 21 medical personnel from the PA and currently is training a team for pediatric heart disease at the Palestine Medical Complex (PMC) in Ramallah under an agreement that will provide for referrals, partial funding and interactions between the PMC and the WMC. SACH also provides support and dialogue activity groups for caregivers (now >200) attending hospital with the children at WMC to ease anxiety an unfamiliarity.
Conclusions: Â SACH responds to the challenges of cardiac care for children in remote regions by providing free services on a voluntary basis at the WMC in Israel: SACH is a model for a global humanitarian health care initiative. The Heart of the Matter Project is a similar model for regional cooperation in pediatric cardiac care.
Thank you Lucie! Looking forward to seeing you on December 5th at the Young Leadership Conference in NYC.
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