The Road Ahead

 

A NEW ERA BEGINS AT IMAHELPS AS INES AND TRACEY ALLEN STEP DOWN FROM THEIR TOP LEADERSHIP POSITIONS

by Jeff Crider, August 2023

 

Photo courtesy of Jeff Crider, IMAHelps

 

Photo courtesy of Jeff Crider, IMAHelps

 

IMAHelps President and CEO Dr. Cristobal Barrios, Jr. and Vice President Jeff Crider are committed to building IMAHelps into a sustainable global healthcare organization

         A new era has begun at IMAHelps under the leadership of Dr. Cristobal Barrios, Jr., a longtime volunteer who was elected President and CEO of IMAHelps earlier this year after Ines Allen stepped down from the organization’s top leadership post after 23 years.

         Another longtime IMAHelps volunteer, Jeff Crider, was promoted to the position of Vice President after Ines’s husband, Tracey Allen, resigned his Vice President’s position to become Secretary and Treasurer of the organization.

         Ines remains active with IMAHelps, however, having assumed the position of Chairwoman Emeritus. Ines helped manage the group’s latest medical mission to Quito, Ecuador, and continues to mentor Barrios, IMAHelps Mission Coordinator and COO Jennifer Padilla and Crider as they take on their new positions.

         “Both Jeff and I are committed to taking IMAHelps to the next level, building it into a sustainable, global healthcare organization that continue to organize medical humanitarian missions around the world in keeping with Ines and Tracey’s vision,” Dr. Barrios said.

         “That vision includes establishing an endowment fund that will eventually be used to provide a stipend for a CEO and other positions as determined by the board. We know it’s going to take years to build the kind of endowment we need. But we are committed to do this as we continue to improve our operations and procedures because we want IMAHelps to outlive us and to continue providing life-changing surgeries, dentistry, prosthetics and other critical healthcare services for impoverished people around the world.”

        

 

Photo courtesy of Angelo DiFusco.

Dr. Barrios is a general and trauma surgeon, clinical professor of surgery and assistant dean of the U.C. Irvine School of Medicine who has volunteered his surgical talents on every major IMAHelps missions since the group’s 2011 mission to Estelí, Nicaragua in addition to helping to organize every major mission since then. Dr. Barrios was also involved in the internationally publicized surgery for 28-year old Enrique Galván of Paraguay in 2019. Enrique suffered from excessive tissue growths all over his face, chest and back caused by neurofibromatosis, a condition some people incorrectly call “Elephant Man’s disease.”

         Dr. Barrios and another UC Irvine Medical Center colleague, Dr. Mark Kobayashi, a plastic surgeon, examined Galván during the 2018 IMAHelps mission to Luque, Paraguay, but concluded the surgery he needed was too risky to do in Paraguay, which also lacked appropriate surgical equipment.
         Dr. Barrios and Dr. Kobayashi subsequently spent several months in discussions with the management of UC Irvine Medical Center and ultimately convinced them to let them do Galván’s surgery for free at the famed Irvine hospital as a humanitarian effort.

IMAHelps Vice President Jeff Crider prepares for an interview during the 2015 IMAHelps mission to Zacatecoluca, La Paz, El Salvador.

Photo courtesy of Marilyn Chung

         Crider, for his part, has volunteered on every IMAHelps mission since 2008, serving as a Spanish language interpreter, publicist and media spokesman in addition to managing IMAHelps’ written communications with foreign governments and assisting with medical mission planning. He also wrote the book A Vision of Hope: The First 20 Years of IMAHelps, as a volunteer effort to promote the organization and raise money for medicines and supplies.

         Since its founding in 2000, IMAHelps has provided free medical and dental treatment for over 100,000 impoverished people of all ages in nine countries, including over 2,500 life-changing surgeries, from cleft lip and club foot repairs to pacemaker implants and other life-saving surgical interventions.

         Operating like a mobile hospital team, IMAHelps volunteers include general, orthopedic, plastic, maxillofacial and OBGYN surgeons, cardiologists, internal medicine doctors, pediatricians and dentists. Unlike other nonprofits, IMAHelps has no paid staff and its volunteers cover the cost of their travel to participate in IMAHelps missions. This enables us to use virtually all of the donations it receives to purchase medicines and supplies for each mission, with only a small amount of funds being used to cover the costs of accounting, insurance and transportation for our volunteers between the airports, hotels and the hospitals where we conduct medical missions.

 

New Medical Mission Research Initiatives

 

Olivia Yale, right, a medical student from UC Irvine, helps check in patients in the triage tent during the IMAHelps mission in Quito.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Crider, IMAHelps

         Dr. Barrios recruited a team of medical students from UC Irvine to conduct research during the IMAHelps mission to Quito, Ecuador, in early August 2023.
         “The students will develop and conduct a survey designed to provide information on the demographics of our medical mission patients, their expectations and reasons for seeking medical mission care as well as their satisfaction with the treatment and services provided by medical mission volunteers,” Dr. Barrios said. “The information collected through the survey will help us tailor care for future missions. Internal surveys of medical mission team members will also be conducted to gauge their sense of meaningfulness and effectiveness so that we can identify ways to improve our methods of care delivery.”

        The IMAHelps board appointed Juan Pablo Hoyos, a UC Irvine student, to oversee the survey research conducted in Ecuador and to serve as a liaison with the board. Dr. Barrios said IMAHelps plans to publish key findings from its upcoming medical mission research with medical journals in the U.S. and overseas.

 

A New Associate Board

 

         With several of its volunteers now in their 50s and 60s, the IMAHelps board has also established an associate board comprised of young volunteers who are willing to learn the details of international medical mission planning, fundraising and media outreach, while providing their own ideas to improve IMAHelps as an organization.

         “We think it’s important to think out of the box and be willing to try new approaches with everything we do, if it can improve our performance as a nonprofit global health organization,” Dr. Barrios said.

         “Having an Associate Board also gives us the ability to prepare a group of young professionals who will eventually be qualified to move into positions of leadership on the IMAHelps board in the future.”

Carolina Vasconcelos manages the IMAHelps dental team.

Photo courtesy of Angelo DiFusco.

         The IMAHelps Associate Board is comprised of several volunteers, including Jennifer Padilla, an EMT in the level one trauma center at Loma Linda University Medical Center, who serves as the IMAHelps mission coordinator and COO; Carolina Vasconcelos, a Claremont-based dental assistant; Kevalyn Bharadwaj, manager of health and racial equity for Boulder County Public Health in Boulder, Colorado; and Alex Reyes, a self-employed pilates instructor and social media specialist in Northern California.