Orthopedic Surgeon Gets $1.5m Arthur Guinness Funding

Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Havalee Henry was recently presented with a cheque for J$1.5 million after her project, a mobile clinic, was one of three selected to receive money from the Arthur Guinness fund. She was the first to receive funds during a special luncheon held at Red Stripe’s offices on Spanish Town Road. The other two are expected to receive theirs this week.

Four Caribbean nationals will receive cheques for similar amounts to help fund philanthropic projects. The projects all embody the spirit of Arthur Guinness, who after founding the Guinness brewery in Ireland more than 250 years ago, set up pharmacies and other community-based services in the communities around the brewery. “These projects come from individuals who embody the spirit of Arthur Guinness,” brand manager Racquel Nevins explained. “They will be thinkers, dreamers, persons who do good for communities without expecting anything back.”

expanding mobile clinic

Henry’s project involves expanding the services of a mobile clinic to provide greater access to health care to under-served communities island-wide. She explained: “There is a mobile clinic already established by the Shipping Association of Jamaica. They service the community close by to the wharves and they do that twice monthly. It’s a renovated 40-foot trailer. They get volunteer doctors who come to provide primary and preventative care. The role of the project is to expand on that and have more scheduled clinics throughout each month, going into other areas where access to health care is very difficult to come by. So we can take it out to very rural areas, increasing the number of people being seen and improving access where people wouldn’t normally have access.”

Henry is currently doing residency as an orthopaedic surgeon at Yale. She studied at the University of Connecticut and at Northeastern University in Boston, where she read for her Masters in Muscle Physiology. She also attended medical school at the University of Rochester.

Since her days at Wolmer’s, Henry had always been involved in community service. “I was a lieutenant governor of Key Club, Division 1,” she said. “Just being able to be involved in your community has always been important to me. Just being able to play a role and have people involved and come along to propagate that, I think is also very important, because at the end of the day, one person really can’t do very much, but if you can get that chain reaction going that’s how you can impact any kind of situation.” She continued: “And this is how all this came about because I feel like along the way there was always someone there to help me; and people say it’s luck, but it’s really who you have pushing you along.”

high praise

Nevins had high praise for the project. “It’s a very worthwhile project. We had over 50 applicants and we had to whittle down to three and we are very happy and proud of the three that came through,” she said. “This one specifically had to do with health care and people accessing that, which is a big issue sometimes, so it’s an excellent project which was approved by everyone locally and globally.”

In addition to the funding, Nevins said, Guinness will be lending additional support. “Aside from the funding we are really going to look to rally people from the company to go down and volunteer as well. We are very proud of Havalee Henry and the Mobile Clinic project.”

The other two projects – Bridging the Gap, under which housing will be provided for young adults who presently lack skills, and Mike Horticulture – under which skills training will be provided to persons in the field of agriculture and rehiring them into the farm so they can earn a living. The projects were developed by Wayne Williams and Lindel Buchanan respectively.

 

 

[VIA – Jamaica Gleaner]