Rachel Vreeman, MD, MS, speaks with Frank Anthony, MD, MPH, Minister of Health, Guyana (right)

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is seizing “an amazing opportunity” in global public health in a three-year initiative that is expanding health care to Guyana’s more than 800,000 citizens. Launched in 2022, the initiative is a partnership among Mount Sinai, the Hess Corporation, and the government of Guyana, and it is already bringing crucial health screenings to roughly half the nation’s eligible children.

“It is a profound honor to serve the people of Guyana in this mission to give everyone the best opportunity for a healthy and long life,” says Jeremy Boal, MD, Chief Clinical Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System, who is overseeing Mount Sinai’s efforts under the initiative.

Guyana is a racially and ethnically diverse nation at the northern edge of South America, with strong historic and cultural ties with nearby Caribbean nations. The nation entered a transformative era in 2015, when nearly 11 billion barrels of crude oil reserves were discovered offshore and its government began making plans to invest in much-needed infrastructure in many areas, including health care. Guyana’s National Healthcare Initiative was launched after John Hess, Chief Executive Officer of Hess and a member of Mount Sinai’s Boards of Trustees, approached Mount Sinai about partnering with Guyana’s government and Hess to expand health care in the country. The collaboration will make health care more accessible even to its most vulnerable citizens, including pregnant people and adults living with diabetes or cancer.

Working closely with Guyana’s government, a 40-member project team of experts from the Mount Sinai Health System are providing thought partnership to the country’s leadership to implement a range of improvements to the national health infrastructure of Guyana. These teams are led by the Mount Sinai’s Arnhold Institute of Global Health and Mount Sinai International, organizations dedicated to advancing Mount Sinai’s mission of delivering innovative, high-quality health care around the globe.

Initial steps: Increasing access to children’s health care, primary care for diabetics, and a “world class” pathology lab

Already underway is a national child and youth health initiative, the first primary care program for children in Guyana. Launched in August 2023, the program provides comprehensive health exams for all nursery school students in Guyana, children aged three to five years old. Within its first month the program conducted health screenings—including vision, hearing, and dental evaluation—on 50 percent of the eligible children in Guyana, and the program is now reaching every region of the country, including remote regions accessible only by boat or plane.

“We’re really proud to move this bold children’s health initiative forward with the Guyana Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education,” says Rachel Vreeman, MD, MS, Director of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health, which is guiding the program. “It provides the critical steps toward implementing a primary care system and more universal health coverage. We’re providing screenings that let us identify children’s health issues early and connect families and communities and schools with the health centers in a new way.”

Comprehensive school health screening in the indigenous community of Karasabai in Region 9, Guyana

The next step is to enhance the national primary care program for adults, which will initially focus on diabetes screenings. After developing new national guidelines on diabetes in partnership with Guyana’s Ministry of Health, Mount Sinai experts trained Guyanese health professionals to implement high quality screening and care for diabetes at every level of the health system. Under the program, which also supplies medication and equipment, the Guyanese providers will, in turn, travel across the country to train health professionals in their local communities.

“The diabetes care platform is a model for other ‘train the trainer’ programs and primary care efforts, which will expand to provide screening and care for health challenges across Guyana, including high blood pressure, cancer screening, mental health screening, and other chronic diseases,” Dr. Vreeman says. The diabetes training is accompanied by efforts to build an infrastructure of expertise, supplies, and referral pathways, explains Dr. Vreeman, noting that expanding primary care services throughout the country will prevent patients from having to travel long distances for care. The Arnhold Institute is also guiding the country in building a more robust health care workforce, as well as the eventual rollout of a national electronic health records system and national health information system strategy.

The health care initiative will also expand specialty and tertiary health care at both public and private health care facilities throughout the country, particularly in cancer and cardiovascular care. Under the partnership, Mount Sinai International is working with Guyana’s government to develop a strategic plan that will determine how and where these services will be implemented, and how they will be funded and staffed. While most of these services are still in the planning stages, a telepathology lab is expected to be in operation by January 2024. Using advanced remote technology, the lab will allow doctors in Georgetown, the nation’s capital, to work with Mount Sinai pathologists in New York to diagnose patients in Guyana.

“The technology will decrease the wait time in Guyana for high-quality pathology readings from two to three months to few days,” says Szabi Dorotovics, MD, MBA, President, Mount Sinai International, who is overseeing these efforts. “I don’t think I have to tell you how much of a difference that can make, especially in cancer care. The quality of the readings will be world class.”

Guiding quality improvements at Guyana’s largest hospital

Under the initiative, Mount Sinai is also consulting on quality and operational improvements with leaders from Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation in Georgetown, Guyana’s largest hospital, where roughly half of patients are women seeking maternity care. These include enhancements to its neonatal intensive care unit; accident and emergency services; fire and life safety procedures; information technology; pharmacy services; supplies, equipment, and technology; minor renovations to the hospital campus, and more. A major challenge faced by hospital leaders in rolling out these improvements is a lack of resources, including a shortage of nurses and equipment.

“What we have to do is work with them, given the constraints, and figure out what can we do,” says Art Gianelli, MBA, MPH, FACHE, Chief Transformation Officer for the Mount Sinai Health System, who is leading these efforts with the Mount Sinai International Group. “Maybe we can’t do what is ideal, but we can take practical steps to improve all of the areas.”

Most of these improvements involve process changes that make up the foundation of good care, explains Mr. Gianelli, some of which are already underway. “The next step is to build on this foundational work and start to drive changes in outcomes, but you have to start at the beginning.”

Hospital leaders have already made a number of quality improvements, such as installing soap dispensers throughout the building to help reduce the spread of hospital-acquired infections, and deploying hospital administrator “safety huddles” to improve awareness of potential safety issues. For Guyana’s largest and busiest hospital, where many patients travel long distances to obtain care, these changes are sure to have a positive “ripple effect” across the country, Mr. Gianelli says.

While Guyana’s health care initiative is still in its early phases, it is providing valuable insight into how to target, at a national level, social determinants of disease. This will allow the country to address problems early and provide community-based prevention strategies, according to Dr. Vreeman.

“Our teams feel really privileged to be serving as this partner for Guyana’s Ministry of Health,” says Dr. Vreeman, Chair of Global Health and Health System Design at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “It’s an amazing opportunity to be able to bring up to scale some of the most evidence-based practices for what works in global settings. Through this initiative, Guyana is improving access to care, especially for marginalized and vulnerable children, and for people living in remote communities who have often experienced systemic inequities.”