Contract - July 2009 - (Page 36)

essay caring collaborator As AmeriCares’ medical director, Dr. Frank Bia combines medicine and the power of partnership to bring emergency aid to thousands of people worldwide. By Holly Richmond Photography courtesy of AmeriCares With the tagline, “A passion to help. The ability to deliver,” AmeriCares prides itself on modeling the global strength of collaboration and partnership. As a nonprofit international disaster relief and humanitarian organization, its mission is to deliver medicine and medical supplies to people in crisis around the world. Since its founding in 1982, AmeriCares has distributed more than $8 billion in humanitarian aid to 137 countries. While the extent of the partnering and collaboration that facilitates such services is farreaching and includes thousands of U.S. and international physicians, administrators, and coordinators, one man, Dr. Frank Bia, AmeriCares’ medical director, is charged with the task of overseeing the planning, assessment, resourcing, and clinical operations of the organization’s Global Programs Operations. In essence, Bia’s job is to ensure that the correct supplies get to the appropriate locations, and once there, that they are rapidly distributed and put to use. His, and AmeriCares’, ultimate goal is to save thousands of lives that hang in the balance of devastating natural and man-made disasters. “I think if you are going to make a contribution and make a difference, it’s better to look from the outside,” states Bia. “I’m a kid from the Bronx, and it’s a privilege that I got to become a physician. There is a social contract that must be fulfilled, and I’ve always seen this contract through a worldwide lens.” As an expert in infectious disease and international health, Bia spent much of his career— more than 30 years—at Yale University School of Medicine where he served as a professor of both medicine in infectious diseases and laboratory medicine in clinical microbiology, as well as the co-director of the university’s International Health Program. Prior to his tenure at Yale, he received degrees from Cornell Medical College, the Harvard School Wikinomics: is based on four ideas: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally. This mass collaboration relies on free individual agents to come together and cooperate to improve a given operation or solve a problem. 36 contract july 2009 www.contractmagazine.com http://www.contractmagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Contract - July 2009

Contract - July 2009
Contents
Editorial
Guest Editorial
Resources: Alpha Workshops
Green Building Goes Global
The Collaborative Workplace
All For Fun
Group Practice
Caring Collaborator
Life is a Circus
Cohesive Spaces in Public Places
On the Landscape
Castles in the Sand
Face to Face
Heart and Soul
Project Management
Dream Team
Critique
Ad Index

Contract - July 2009