In 1990, Indiana University began a partnership with Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya. The partnership was formally established as the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) in 2001. More than three decades later, what started as a small team responding to the HIV and AIDS epidemic has grown into a global partnership focused on overall population health including chronic diseases, nutrition and financial stability.
This unique, cross-cultural health care collaboration is the focus of a new book by James D. Kelly, an associate professor and director of journalism in The Media School at IU Bloomington. Kelly, a photojournalist by profession, first learned about the program when he came to IU in 2007. "I realized that people in Indiana needed to know more about this," Kelly said. Over three summers, he took journalism students to Eldoret to write, photograph and record stories on AMPATH's work. In 2019, Kelly received a Fulbright Scholars award and set off to document how the program works in providing health care and training medical professionals.
The result, "From AIDS to Population Health: How an American University and a Kenyan Medical School Transformed Healthcare in East Africa", was published by IU Press in November. The book uses 100 color photographs and 70,000 words to document the AMPATH story, focusing in part on the many workers who provide community-level help. "I wanted to emphasize the role of what I call 'worker bees,' the regular folks who go out every day and perform the service that is AMPATH," Kelly said.