IU Collaborates to Combat AIDS and Other Diseases

Guest: Jim Kelly

Host: Ralf Shaw, LWV-BMC

January 14, 2025

In January, Civic Conversations welcomed Indiana University's Media School Professor Jim Kelly. We talked about his book, From AIDS to Population Health: How an American University and a Kenyan Medical School Transformed Health Care in East Africa. Kelly explained how the AMPATH-Academic Model for Providing Access to Healthcare was formed by Indiana University physicians interested in starting a program of sharing medical expertise between Kenya, Africa, and Indiana University during the AIDS crisis. In 2001, in response to the devastating HIV/AIDS pandemic, the partners united their efforts to establish one of Africa's largest, most comprehensive, and effective HIV/AIDS control systems. The consortium consists of nine members: Indiana University School of Medicine, Brown University School of Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, Providence Portland Medical Center, Purdue University, University of Utah School of Medicine, University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, and University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. Today, in collaboration with the Kenyan Ministry of Health and the United States government, AMPATH is expanding its focus beyond HIV to address the pressing needs for primary healthcare, chronic disease care, and specialty care. Kelly has long been interested in the program and decided that he wanted to document the program in photographs and text.