Health: Health for Palestine (H4P)

Expanding Healthcare for Refugee Communities

Mission

Health for Palestine (H4P) is a collaborative initiative between Palestinian community centers and international academic health professionals. It is one of 1for3’s Nexus programs, which seek to support the water, food, health, and education needs of Palestinian refugees.

Snapshot

H4P (Health for Palestine): Community Health Training & Patient-Care Program

  • In 3 refugee camps in the West Bank through Community Health Workers

    · H4P Balata helps Autistic children in the largest camp in the West Bank

    · H4P Aida has nearly 10,000 home visits conducted since 2018

    · 22 young Palestinians trained as community health workers

    · Partnerships with doctors from Harvard Medical School, Cornell Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital

  • 15 trained community health workers employed

  • 200 families served

  • Training on emergency response for CHWs, July 2023

  • Ongoing CHW training on community health care, treatment plans for patients, ethics of data collecting & sharing

  • Expansion of training on using nutrition & food production to aid chronic illness healing \

  • Partnership with physicians from Harvard Medical School, Cornell Medical School, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School & Boston Children’s Hospital

     

Picture, right: Aya Darwish, H4P Coordinator, tests the blood of a patient, while a colleague records the results.

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Program: H4P

In 2017 our partners at the Lajee Center alerted us to a growing need to provide a community-based solution for chronically ill residents in two UN-run refugee camps. After iterative discussions with our partners in Palestine, and consultations with experts at medical institutions around Boston, Health for Palestine (H4P), a Community Health Worker (CHW) program, was born in January 2018.

Since that time H4P has trained mixed gender teams to serve as CHWs in UN-run Palestinian refugee camps. The teams target healing chronic illnesses and mental trauma.

H4P Leadership

  • Bram Wispelwey, MD

    Co-Founder H4P

    Associate Physician, Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women’s HospitalInstructor, Harvard Medical School; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is a Co-founder and Chief Strategist of Health for Palestine. Dr. Wispelwey’s research focuses on structural racism in hospital triage, ethics, community health worker impact, social and political barriers to health, and colonial violence. Before his medical career, Dr. Wispelwey pursued LGBT-rights activism. He is currently an Atlantic Health Equity Fellow.

  • Henry Louis, MD

    H4P International Medical Director

    Family Medicine Resident Physician, University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Louis's responsibilities include supervising all activities related to qualitative and quantitative data collection on program activities. Furthermore, alongside the team of international advisers, Dr. Louis contributes to a diverse array of development efforts including community organizing. His passion for working alongside community members and pursing health equity and social justice have dragged him across the world, from Egypt to Armenia to his current beloved Palestine.

  • Karameh Hawash Kuemmerle, MD

    H4P Balata

    Dr. Karameh is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a pediatric neurologist at Boston Children’s Hospital. She specializes in traumatic brain injury and epilepsy.

    Much of Dr. Karameh’s work takes place in the Brain Injury Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, a multidisciplinary center coordinating care between the Trauma Center, Neurology, Neurosurgery, Sports Medicine, and Neuropsychology.

  • David Scales, MD

    Co-Founder H4P

    Assistant Professor of Medicine, Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College. He has extensive experience with various NGOs in the region, serving on the board of Questscope and having volunteered to provide medical assistance to Syrian refugees in Jordan. Trained in Sociology and Internal Medicine, his interests center on structural determinants of health, health disparities, and medical communication.

  • Aya Darwish, CHW

    H4P Palestine Director

    Aya has been a community Health worker since 2019. Darwish studied medical laboratory in Bethlehem and continue to study counseling and mental health with a team of local Palestinian and international phycologists.