Innovation for Good: Partners in Health

In January 2026, 30 Rwandans will celebrate nearly seven years of study by crossing the stage to collect their medical diplomas. They’ll graduate as the inaugural medical class from the University of Global Health Equity, an institution founded by nonprofit organization Partners in Health (PIH) to help remedy medical injustice in Africa. The training provided by the university is a significant stride toward addressing the lack of medical professionals in the country, a shortage the World Health Organization expects to reach more than 6 million by 2030.

“We want to bring the benefits of modern medicine to those who need it the most, and serve as an antidote to despair,” says Eric Hansen, the senior director of external relations at PIH.

For PIH, administering an antidote to medical injustice has been the focus of its mission since its inception in 1987. In each of the 11 countries it serves, PIH begins by collaborating with the government to bolster their healthcare systems by training workers, providing resources like equipment and facilities, and establishing an operational blueprint for sustainable and systematic change.

PIH then studies the efficacy of the care it provides and shares the findings for replication in the countries it cannot serve, offering its research and best practices to aid other governments in ensuring equitable access to quality health care.

“We have an open-ended commitment to all of these countries,” Hansen says, “because the goal is to help them ensure that they can provide modern medicine to their people and honor their right to health, as is guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Tangible change for medical injustice

PIH’s commitment to fighting health inequity has resulted in palpable, global transformation. In 2021, it helped deliver more than 58,000 safe births around the world and treat almost 100 patients in Peru for tuberculosis. Each year, the organization also treats 2,600 Haitian children for malnutrition and 44,000 HIV patients globally.

As medical students continue to graduate from the University of Global Health Equity, they will join the fight against medical injustice by treating and training the next generation of Rwandans.

Good Store

During a trip to Sierra Leone in 2019, author and YouTuber John Green witnessed medical injustice firsthand. He arrived at the epicenter of the maternal mortality crisis in Kono eager to learn more and make a difference.

“When we assume that people living in poverty don’t deserve access to healthcare, we fail morally but also put the future of all humanity at risk,” says Green. “All human lives have equal value, and we need to build systems that better reflect that truth.”

Understanding the financial burden associated with creating these systems prompted John and his brother, Hank, to create Good Store, an e-commerce platform that donates 100 percent of its profits to charities that fight medical injustice through the sale of products like socks, coffee, tea, and soap.

While the brothers have found success in multiple professional domains prior to Good Store—including writing several New York Times bestselling novels and creating vlogbrothers, a YouTube channel that has amassed nearly four million subscribers—it is the fight against medical injustice that has provided them with their greatest fulfillment.

“John and I have done so many cool things and we’re really grateful for that, but a lot of the traditional paths of getting motivated toward a new goal just weren’t exciting to us anymore,” explains Hank Green. “But it turns out that helping people who really need it and doing things in a weird and different way are both very motivating for us.”

A groundbreaking project

Since its inception in 2019, Good Store has donated more than $8 million to charities like Partners in Health (PIH), an international nonprofit organization that combats medical injustice. In 2021, PIH was able to begin using some of the profits raised by constructing the Maternal Center of Excellence, a facility designed to provide advanced maternal and child health services in Sierra Leone.

The facility is aiming to reduce the lifetime risk of maternal death, a statistic that was 1 in 33 only ten years ago, compared to 1 in 3,400 in the United States.

Addressing this issue has been the focus of Good Store and PIH’s efforts, which have already begun reducing maternal deaths. In 2020, only 1 in 52 women in the country were dying of childbirth—and the project is far from over.

“The fact that life expectancy among humans varies by several decades based entirely on geography is a failure of our species, and one that we believe can be addressed,” explained John.

Good Store’s efforts aren’t just serving to combat medical injustice in Sierra Leone. When John visited the construction site of the Maternal Center of Excellence in 2023, he learned that the development project has paved the way for hundreds of Sierra Leoneans to learn new skills as they contribute to the building’s construction. In a vlog of his trip, John explains that 65 percent of the workers on site are women, one of whom voices that this project has united future mothers who will inevitably give birth at the hospital.

Even though the center is set to open in 2026, the fight against medical injustice will continue well beyond its completion.

“There will always be work to do, and it will always be worth doing,” says Hank.

This article was originally published in the January-February 2025 issue of alive magazine (US edition).