“I am interested in improving health care in resource-poor settings. When deciding what projects to support, I look at who is doing the strongest, most innovative work, and whether they have the capability to test their concepts in multiple locations around the world. I first encountered Atul Gawande through his writing and was quickly impressed by the elegant simplicity of his checklist concept. A great deal of money is being invested in pharmaceutical and biotechnology research these days, but very little is devoted to less glamorous ideas in systems innovation that have real potential to improve health care delivery around the world. The Health Systems Innovation Research Fund has enabled Atul to scale up his work on safe surgery and safe childbirth checklists and develop a new checklist-based approach to improving end-of-life care.”
Mala Gaonkar, AB ’91, MBA ’96