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Raj Panjabi

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Raj Panjabi
Born
Rajesh Ramesh Panjabi

(1981-02-03) February 3, 1981 (age 43)
Monrovia, Liberia
OccupationPhysician
Known forCo-Founder of Last Mile Health
Websitewww.lastmilehealth.org

Raj Panjabi (born February 3, 1981) is a Liberian Indian American physician and social entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Last Mile Health. Panjabi also serves on the faculty of the Division of Global Health Equity at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

History

The son of Indian immigrants who had migrated to West Africa, Panjabi was born and raised in Monrovia, Liberia. After civil war broke out in Liberia in 1989, Panjabi, at age nine, and his family fled on a cargo plane to Sierra Leone and eventually resettled, initially with a host family, in the United States in High Point, North Carolina. Panjabi returned to Liberia years later, in 2005, as a medical student. With a small team of Liberian civil war survivors, American health workers and $6,000 he had received as a wedding gift, Panjabi co-founded the non-profit organization, Last Mile Health.

Career

Last Mile Health saves lives in the world’s most remote communities by partnering with governments to design, scale and advocate for national networks of community health workers—people with a middle or high school level education, hired from their own villages, who are given the training, medicines, and clinical mentorship they need to bring health care to their neighbors’ doorsteps. Panjabi's and Last Mile Health's work on community health workers and remote rural health care delivery has been published in the Lancet,[1] Journal of American Medical Association,[2] PLoS Medicine,[3] the Bulletin of the World Health Organization,[4] and the Journal of Global Health.[5]

Panjabi delivered the commencement address at the graduation of Harvard Medical School in 2015, titled "The Power of Selflessness." He delivered testimony at the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy session, "A Progress Report of the West Africa Ebola Epidemic" - arguing investments in rural community health workers can help make health systems responsive to Ebola and future epidemics. Panjabi highlighted the role of investing in rural community health workers at the TIME-Fortune Global Forum hosted by His Holiness Pope Francis in 2016.

Panjabi was a co-author of the global report, "Strengthening Primary Health Care through Community Health Workers: Investment Case and Financing Recommendations." The report found that investment in community health worker (CHW) programs can deliver a high economic return—up to 10:1—and calls on government leaders, international financiers, donors, and the global health community broadly to take specific actions to support the financing and scale up of CHW programs across sub-Saharan Africa.

Education

Panjabi is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, received a Masters of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was a Clinical Fellow at Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine and primary care at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Awards

2017 TED Prize.[6][7][8][9]

2016 "100 Most Influential People in the World", TIME Magazine.[10]

2015 "World’s 50 Greatest Leaders", Fortune Magazine [11]

2015 Clinton Global Citizen Award [12]

2015 Harvard Burke Global Health Fellowship

2014 Distinguished Young Alumni Award, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2013 Forbes 400 Philanthropy Fellow

2013 Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Social Entrepreneur

2013 Global Citizen Movement Award

2011 Echoing Green Fellow

2010 Outstanding Recent Graduate Award, Johns Hopkins University

References

  1. ^ Westerhaus M, Panjabi R, Mukherjee J. (2008). Violence and the Role of Illness Narratives. Lancet 2008. 372; 699-701.
  2. ^ Johnson K., Asher J., Rosborough S., Raja A., Panjabi R., Beadling C., Lawry L. (2008). Association of combatant status and sexual violence with health and mental health outcomes in postconflict Liberia. Journal of the American Medical Association, 300(6), 676-690.
  3. ^ Ly EJ, Sathananthan V, Griffiths T, Kanjee Z, Kenny A, Gordon N. (2016) Facility-Based Delivery during the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic in Rural Liberia: Analysis from a Cross-Sectional, Population-Based Household Survey. PLoS Medicine. 13(8): e1002096.
  4. ^ Perry HB, Dhillon RS, Liu A, Chitnis K, Panjabi R, Palazuelos D, Koffi AK, Kandeh JN, Camara M, Camara R, Nyenswah T. Community health worker programmes after the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak. Bull World Health Organ. 2016 Jul 1; 94(7):551-3.
  5. ^ Kenny A, Basu G, Ballard M, Griffiths T, Kentoffio K, Niyonzima JB, Sechler GA, Selinsky S, Panjabi R, Siedner M, Kraemer J. Remoteness and maternal and child health utilization in rural Liberia: A population-based survey. Journal of Global Health. 2015; 5:2.
  6. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)#TED_Prize
  7. ^ http://time.com/4584987/2017-ted-prize-winner-raj-panjabi/
  8. ^ http://blog.ted.com/announcing-2017-ted-prize-winner-raj-panjabi/
  9. ^ http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/12/01/503994471/a-million-dollar-prize-for-a-doctor-who-goes-the-extra-mile
  10. ^ http://time.com/4302208/raj-panjabi-2016-time-100/
  11. ^ http://fortune.com/worlds-greatest-leaders/2015/raj-panjabi-34/
  12. ^ https://www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-global-initiative/meetings/annual-meetings/2015/clinton-global-citizen-awards

1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2016/08/12/how-liberia-is-working-to-deliver-healthcare-to-more-than-a-quarter-of-its-population/#12c2812b2adf

2. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/power-selflessness

3. http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/040716_Panjabi_Testimony.pdf

4. http://fortune.com/2016/12/06/brainstorm-health-12-06-intro/

5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-walker/new-report-shows-that-inv_b_7829892.html

6. http://www.who.int/hrh/news/2015/chw_financing/en/

7. http://www.healthenvoy.org/new-report-highlights-benefits-from-investments-in-chw-programs/

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