Our plan is to help build a healthier Liberia
Mission: BAAC aims to build capacity for excellence in anesthesia education and practice that is locally responsive, improves universal access to high quality, safe anesthesia and surgical care, and improves individual and population health outcomes with an emphasis on health equity.
Vision: Every Liberian in need of surgery deserves access to high quality, safe anesthesia when and where they need it; where a person lives should not determine if a person lives.
Our approach:
The Boston-Africa Anesthesia and Critical Care Collaborative (BAAC) is a group of anesthesia providers, nurses, and hospital/training institutions in Liberia and the US committed to assuring accessible, high quality, safe anesthesia care in Africa. The program was founded in 2015 by Dr. Eileen Stuart- Shor, a nurse practitioner at BIDMC's Pre-Anesthesia Testing Division, as an outgrowth of the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP). It represents an innovative model for improving global health in resource-constrained areas as it focuses on creating a sustainable system to train home-grown anesthesia providers rather than relying on international providers. The Program is allied with the Phebe-Esther Bacon College of Health Sciences Program in Liberia.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC)/Harvard Medical School,
Northeastern University Nurse Anesthesia Program (NEU) and
Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH)
Liberia is a country of over 4.5 million where most anesthesia care is provided by nurse anesthetists. They are in desperate need of well-trained nurse anesthesia providers, so this program is essential for them to increase needed surgery and decrease maternal mortality through proper anesthesia care. The goal of BAAC is to build capacity for excellent anesthesia education and practice that is locally responsive, improves access to anesthesia and surgical care, and improves individual and population health outcomes.
The program has been remarkably successful, with progression from a foreign faculty led program to a Liberian-owned and led program and from a diploma program to a bachelor's degree. On April 30, 2024, Phebe College of Health Sciences graduated their first group of 12 students to attain a bachelors in nurse anesthesia trained in anesthesia. This represents enormous progress since these graduates can now go out into their communities in Liberia and provide much-needed, effective and safe anesthesia care to their fellow citizens.
DONATE HERE : If you would like to donate to this life-saving program, click here.
To get involved and learn more, contact: estuarts@bidmc.harvard.edu
