A warm welcome to our new social entrepeneur resident: Indrid De Beer, manager of Pharmaccess Namibia
This fall, the Department of International Health is fortunate to have a successful social entrepreneur resident with us here in Boston. She is Ingrid De Beer, the manager of Pharmaccess Namibia for the past eight years. She has helped to develop and evaluate innovative public health programs including low cost health insurance plans that include AIDS treatment, mobile workplace testing programs for HIV and other chronic diseases, and mobile primary care clinics that bring care to the most isolated areas of the country.
Ingrid helped to found Pharmaccess, which is associated with a Dutch NGO, and has been very effective in developing and evaluating these programs, all of which have an element of public private partnership. Several of the management problems confronted by Pharmaccess Namibia will be addressed by students in IH 743 (Program Implementation). In the last two years, Pharmaccess Namibia has hosted practica for two DIH students.
We invited Ingrid to join DIH this term to share what she has learned about the difficulties of starting and running a public health NGO in a developing country. Students interested in such work can meet with Ingrid and discuss their interests and her experience. She will be making a presentation on Pharmaccess Namibia early in the semester, and students can follow up and arrange to meet with her in her office, CT 363 (email: ingriddb@namibia.pharmaccess.org).
