United2Heal at UVA

Club Description

United2Heal at UVA is working to reduce the disparities in treatment quality between privileged and underprivileged areas of the world by providing overseas health care workers with the basic medical resources they need to save and improve lives. To this end, our organization reaches out to local hospitals and clinics, and accepts in-kind donations of medical goods. Medical equipment considered unusable by strict U.S. packaging and expiration regulations can still be effectively used abroad. Moreover, many medical organizations have no established program or protocol to donate surplus resources. Last academic year, we collected nearly $180,000 worth of medical supplies that otherwise would have been needlessly wasted and, with the help of our sister chapter at VCU, shipped the donations to Haiti. The long-term vision we have for this program isn’t just to manage a static set of supply chains. We intend to turn United2Heal into an umbrella organization providing medical supplies and financing to student-led humanitarian efforts. Future undergraduate students will have the opportunity to lead their own initiatives with our organization serving in a support role. Ultimately, the purpose of executive board members will be to secure medical supplies from local contacts, review student proposals of equipment use, and financing shipping to the destination country. Although this organization has members who are University of Virginia students and may have, University employees associated or engaged in its activities and affairs, the organization is not a part of or an agency. It is a separate and independent organization, which is responsible for and manages its own activities and affairs. The University does not direct, supervise or control the organization and is not responsible for the organization’s contracts, acts or omissions.