Ocean Medicine Foundation Overview
Remote locations
Lush tropical landscapes
Isolated from mainland life
These traits that make islands around the world a paradise for many are the same factors that contribute to poor health and healthcare for the people who live in these communities.
Island residents have lower standards of living, shorter life expectancies and more chronic illnesses than their counterparts in mainland nations. Infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue, AIDS, and parasitic infections abound and epidemics can spread rapidly in these small isolated populations. Compounding the problem are island-specific events such as hurricanes and coastal damage that take a great toll on the already strained healthcare infrastructure.
Improving the health of island residents is a critical global health issue. Solutions to these challenges are elusive since most island medical providers lack the access to current information training, and tools needed to enhance healthcare in their communities.
The Ocean Medicine Foundation envisions a world where people who live on island communities have access to the same level of health information and care as their counterparts on mainlands. Through our programs, we seek to improve the health and healthcare of island populations throughout the world, and to prevent the global spread of infectious disease and epidemics.
Our mission is to leverage technology to increase knowledge that will drive improvements in health and wellness outcomes for island populations. Our programs provide island healthcare professionals with access to current medical information and enhanced connectivity and communication; the result is better health and wellness outcomes for island communities.
Our strategies that advance our objective include:
Improving Access to Medical Information: Ocean Medicine Foundation makes current medical information accessible to island healthcare professionals through several avenues, including:
- Putting web and computer-based medical reference libraries such as online books, journals, clinical tools, and treatment guidelines into the hands of practicing physicians.
- Providing training on how to use online medical reference tools.
- Maintaining Ocean Medicine Foundation a web service which allows practicing island physicians to ask specific medical care questions they may encounter in their daily practice. These questions are then referred to collaborating specialists and partners for answers.
- Developing a rational pharmacy model that optimizes cost effective selections of medicines appropriate for island health needs and resources. This overall template will be modified for island-specific problems.
Access to these tools has been shown to dramatically improve the quality of care and patient outcomes. Specifically:
- Physicians are more able to make appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic choices.
- Ministries of health can optimize their drug budgets more effectively.
Improving Connectivity and Communication: The Ocean Medicine Foundation delivers web services via our website – a portal through which island health professionals may communicate with a broad array of specialists and facilities. Programs that are maintained via the website include:
- A directory of island health care providers, policymakers, hospitals, and medical and public health professionals. This directory will be disseminated to all island medical communities and international organizations working on infectious disease and epidemic prevention, and responders to natural disasters and bioterrorism; for example, appropriate staff at World Health Organization (WHO) and U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC).
- A forum for island health professionals to communicate about topics that are specific to island health and healthcare, such as medical care, nutrition, or job opportunities.
- A database for use by island health professionals to enter epidemic warnings and information.
Additional programs and activities to enhance and facilitate connectivity and communication focus on data collection and sharing among island health professionals and appropriate health organizations. These programs include:
- Managing information received from island health professionals, WHO, and CDC sites, and news sources to look for early signs of disease in island communities. In this way, Ocean Medicine Foundation can provide early warnings about new disease outbreaks and potential epidemics to organizations such as the rapid response unit of WHO, CDC, and islands ministries of health.
- Collecting information about leading causes of morbidity and mortality on each island for web-based data base sharing. Linking island healthcare professionals with world-wide researchers and medical specialty staff and organizations focusing on the causes of morbidity and mortality specific to that island.
- Conducting needs assessments to identify environmental related issues faced by islands (for example, tsunamis, weather, coastal erosion and reef destruction). We link ministries of health and science staff with our partner organizations that are willing to collaborate and provide information about these issues, for example, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and members of the Program for the Observation of the Global Ocean.
Better communication and information sharing saves lives in times of crisis. This type of information network can help prevent the global spread of infectious disease and epidemics, facilitate better medical responses to natural disasters, and act as a warning system for bioterrorism. Greater communication enables health professionals around the world to collaboratively solve difficult problems.
Who We Are:
Andrew Newman, M.D., F.C.C.P., is the Chairman and Managing Director of the Ocean Medicine Foundation. Dr. Newman also serves as Chairman of Stanford University's Health Information Management Committee overseeing the application of computers in clinical activity at Stanford Hospital. In his clinical practice, Dr. Newman specializes in pulmonary diseases, undersea, and sports medicine.
The Ocean Medicine Foundation has a 9-person board of directors with extensive experience in international health, medical information and education, and infectious diseases. OMF also collaborates with a network of individual consulting physicians around the world at leading medical schools including Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Columbia and the University of Hawaii, as well as ocean scientists from Scripps Institute of Oceanography and members of the Program for Observation of the Global Ocean).
How You Can Help
Ocean Medicine Foundation is a non-profit organization. You can help support our mission several ways, including:
- Donating your time or expertise.
- Making a cash or in-kind contributions to help fund:
- Travel costs for medical ambassadors
- Development of training and support programs
- Operating expenses
- Our endowment which is used to expand our services to more island communities
- Acting as an ambassador – tell interested friends or colleagues about us.
Please send contributions to:
Ocean Medicine Foundation
750 Welch Road, Suite 104
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1508
