Bridging the Gap: Addressing Healthcare Needs in Jamaica with Innovative Nonprofit Solutions

In this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange, I had the pleasure of speaking with Paddy Shannon, a passionate advocate for healthcare improvement in Jamaica through his nonprofit organization, Great Works, Inc. The episode is titled “Unlocking Healthcare Potential: Building a Collaborative Mobile Infrastructure for Nonprofits,” and it delves into the critical need for effective healthcare delivery in underserved regions.

Paddy shared his journey, which began over 15 years ago when he accompanied his wife, a dental professional, on a volunteer trip to Jamaica. What started as a reluctant trip turned into a lifelong commitment as they witnessed the overwhelming need for healthcare services in the country. Paddy emphasized the limited resources available to nonprofits and the vast potential for volunteers to make a difference. His vision is to create a sustainable infrastructure that allows medical and dental professionals to focus on providing care without the burden of logistical challenges.

A key theme of our conversation was the importance of collaboration. Paddy explained how he has built a framework that supports various nonprofit groups by providing the necessary equipment and facilities for their missions. He highlighted the 10/90 rule, where only 10% of the effort goes into direct service, while 90% is spent on the infrastructure that makes it possible. By addressing this challenge, Paddy aims to unlock the potential of healthcare delivery in Jamaica and beyond.

We discussed the specific needs of the Jamaican population, where despite having nationalized healthcare, many individuals still struggle to access timely medical and dental services. Paddy recounted his experiences witnessing long lines of people waiting for care, underscoring the urgency of the situation. He also shared his plans to expand the organization’s reach to five countries in the Caribbean within the next two years.

Paddy’s approach is not just about providing services; it’s about creating a collaborative environment where various medical professionals can come together to serve communities effectively. He envisions a system where volunteers can arrive, focus on their specialties, and leave behind well-maintained equipment for future use. This model not only enhances the quality of care but also ensures that resources are utilized efficiently.

As we wrapped up our conversation, Paddy expressed his desire to grow his board and involve more experts from different fields to strengthen the organization. He believes that by fostering enthusiasm and collaboration, Great Works, Inc. can significantly impact healthcare delivery in Jamaica and beyond.

This episode is a testament to the power of collaboration in the nonprofit sector and the importance of addressing infrastructure challenges to maximize the impact of volunteer efforts. I encourage our listeners to consider how they can contribute to this vital work and support organizations like Great Works, Inc. in their mission to improve healthcare access for those in need.

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange. My guest today is Paddy Shannon. Who’s got a nonprofit. I’m going to let him tell you about it, but the title of this episode today, it’s a little different. So you’ll learn some things you’ll be encouraged. And there’s some important work going on. in Jamaica. So the title of today’s episode is Unlocking Healthcare Potential, Building a Collaborative Mobile Infrastructure for Nonprofits. So before we get into the topic, Paddy, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and your passion for this work that you’re doing.

Paddy Shannon:
Well, thank you for having me on. It all started about 15, maybe 16 years ago. My wife is in the dental industry and she got invited to go do basically go corral with a bunch of dental people in Jamaica and didn’t want to go by herself. So she brought me along and our first year we ran into an unexpected bonus in that There were so many people we found that needed help, but the organization that we were with, that we, although we didn’t want to go, we fell in love with going back. So to that end, what we’ve done is we volunteered every year with this group. We volunteer this year, we’ve volunteered for 15, 16 years. And what we found is that there’s just an limited potential of need out there and unlimited potential for people to help. And we’ve decided that in, as you can see, my retirement age here, that that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to continue down this path and improve it along the way in hopes that other nonprofits who want to get in on the world health direction can do so. We’ve run into many, many people, thousands of volunteers, that would like to do more, but they just don’t have the organization or they don’t have the equipment in country or they don’t have the supplies available. And to that end, that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna provide nonprofit groups or just groups of medical dental professionals who want to put their hand in the arena and come in and help people in whatever area they wanna help. Currently in one country, we will be in five countries within the next two years. Most of that is going to be in the Caribbean.

Hugh Ballou:
So the title is Unlocking Healthcare Potential. And you’ve hit on a word that Many people do not use or understand what it means. It’s collaborative. So you’ve, you’ve, there’s a couple of really key points here. I’d like you to highlight, um, first the infrastructure piece. People love doing the work, but the infrastructure is the challenge. How do we. all those, you know, the below 1090 rule is 10% is what you do, what you offer people, 90% is the infrastructure makes it possible. So if I’m hearing you right, you’ve created that part that’s really difficult for nonprofits. And then the second part of the question, how do you build a collaborative space around this infrastructure?

Paddy Shannon:
Well, yes. So what we found and myself not being in the dental industry, but I’m a fixer, I I’ve built every building I’ve ever lived in. We found along the way that my slot in that volunteer group wasn’t the guy that was going to do the sterilization. It was the guy who was going to fix it when the sterilizer broke, or when the compressor went down, or when the chair fell apart. The delivery unit didn’t work. They needed help in that regard. primarily, and this organization is pretty big, they just didn’t have people available to do that. And volunteers are not the best people to do so. They come from a very huge background of skill sets, but they just, you just don’t want anybody fixing your hand piece, or you don’t want anybody fixing your sterilizer. So I took it upon myself and I brought other people in with me that were, That’s what they did for a living. And we decided that we were going to be the primary movers in the infrastructure part of the nonprofit we were volunteering in to try and make it possible. So we could see as a clinic, we could see more people in a shorter period of time. And that eventually grew. We started off with little clinics who are three or four or five chairs. And now we’re up to in that organization, we’re up to clinics that are 10 and 15 chairs in size. It’s a massive clinic and we run two or three of those consecutively every week that we operate. So how does that reflect on what we’re going to do? We’ve noticed because we’re the repair people that Equipment is not maintained well. It tends to come into service and out of service. It gets stored between clinics. Sometimes that wait is five or six months. It’s in the Caribbean. It’s in a storage container that’s in the sun and it just boils itself to death. And nobody really maintains it during that period of time. And I think this is a problem that happens across the nonprofit world. Unless you are incredibly wealthy or have a lot of money, your stuff gets stored someplace. So we decided we wanted to change things and we wanted to have the ability to have the equipment we chose, not what was available, but specific equipment that we chose for the given task at hand. It didn’t matter if you were a dental clinic, you were a women’s health clinic, you were a child health clinic, a cancer clinic, a screening clinic of any kind, we didn’t care. We would have the equipment that we picked and we would maintain that equipment in our own facility. In this case, it’s in Jamaica, and we’ve got a facility. We were basically gifted the access to a nice facility on the Southwest coast of Jamaica so that we can do this. We’re gonna have all the equipment there. We are going to hire full-time people that are in-country, Jamaicans in this case, that are going to maintain our equipment 12 months out of 12. They’re gonna be in temperature-controlled storage. They’re always going to be operating. They’re always going to be working. They’re always going to be running. It’s not going to be a problem. That is the goal. A big goal, I think, but that is the goal. How we’re going to do that? I’ve already got inroads into equipment manufacturers that are donating equipment. And it’s specific to the task at hand. If it’s optometry, I’ve got people who are telling me and giving me lists of equipment they want so they can do what they can do in the field. I don’t really know how to bring it more to that. So if you’re a nonprofit group, or you’re a group of medical professionals, and you want to come do work, the only thing I ask is that you bring yourself and your consumable supplies. And if you want a five chair clinic that does X, I don’t care what X is, I don’t even care where X is in Jamaica in this case, we’ll set it up. Our staff will run the clinic. They’re gonna be professional sterilized techs. They’re gonna be professional x-ray techs. There’s going to be, all three of them are cross-trained in the maintenance of the equipment. It’s going to run. And you can come in, you can serve the people with stuff that’s gonna reduce your patient injury, hopefully, and when you leave, That equipment gets cleaned up, sterilized, repacked, repaired, and ready for the next group to come in. I’m not going to be dealing with the nonprofit people, per se. They’re volunteer groups. That’s not our gig. Our gig is setting up equipment so you can run it. You want to get on the bus that’s the right bus that’s repaired, and it’s going to get you to the point of destination.

Hugh Ballou:
You know that this is huge because there’s so many we’ve had people that have been doing medical projects in other countries as on the show in the past, it’s been several years, but they have to create the whole thing. So the you’re limited in your service. If you have to do all the other pieces, sounds like you’re creating an infrastructure that people could show up and volunteer and go right to the work that’s important. So I want you to speak to the need. You’re an American. but you’re doing this work in Jamaica. So what’s the need and why did you choose Jamaica?

Paddy Shannon:
Well, that was the first country we went to. Um, I remember distinctly the first time pulling into the very first clinic I’d ever been in. And I was just flabbergasted by evidently the word of mouth got out and other people, you know, people called everybody called their friends. And when we pulled in, there’s maybe 15 or 20 volunteers on the bus, we pull up, we start to get out and we discover there’s like 250 people standing in a line waiting to get into the clinic. That particular clinic at the time, I think had six or seven chairs. And of course, this is a dental clinic. So I’m thinking that, you know, I know my wife’s been in dental for a long time In her clinic, her and her doctor see probably six, seven, eight, maybe 10 patients a day. And I got six chairs, I can see 60 people a day. Just the people in line on Monday morning, we wouldn’t see by the end of the week. And it was like that week after week after week. There were more people lined up to see us than we had the availability of providers to provide. And all the years that I’ve been down there, and it’s been a long time, I started with dark hair and no beard, it has never reduced. There are always a line of people. This is a country that has nationalized healthcare, not talking dog about their healthcare, really, but there’s a reason why people line up for our clinics and try to get in to see a dentist. I’m sure the same thing applies to medical in all forms. I’m sure it applies to, you know, people who work on their eyes and their hearts and every other ailment that they have. It’s just medical. It’s just not available to everybody. Although everybody hears it and people say, yeah, everybody can go in and see the doctor, but They evidently can’t, because when we show up, we have more people than we can see. I don’t know how else to quantify that.

Hugh Ballou:
It’s not a particularly large country, is it?

Paddy Shannon:
It is not. There are a few million people on that island. Most of them, the vast majority, live in Kingston. We don’t tend to go to Kingston. That’s where all the services are at. We don’t tend to really go to Montego Bay or the other bigger towns. We try to stay out away from that. where they have sort of a public transportation system to get you to wherever you need to go. You get on a route taxi or you walk or wherever. But to get someplace is not an easy task. Most people don’t own cars. So we tend to stay in the areas where people live, out away from the tourist areas. We go to the little towns in the hills. We go to places where nobody has seen something like us before.

Hugh Ballou:
So let’s dive into this word collaborative. Define what that means to you. And then how do you facilitate this collaboration with others?

Paddy Shannon:
So, uh, on our website, there will be a section set up specifically for these as of yet unknown medical groups or dental groups or vision groups of people. They can come to our page, they decide, you know, they’ve got a half, whatever their group size is, I don’t care. They decide what they want to do. They can come to our webpage and they can say they want to put in this case, a dental program in trial Jamaica, just picking a random place. And they want to, you know, they click on the entry into that page. In that entry is going to be where you want it. how many chairs you’re gonna need, how long you’re gonna be there. All the questions are gonna be answered. You’re gonna have to provide your own consumables, but I will provide all the hardware. And so we’re gonna collaborate on that. We’re gonna collaborate on where you want the clinic. It’s gonna be your clinic. Don’t get me wrong. We’ll put your name all over it if you want me to. I don’t care. I just wanna provide a space for you to come work. You don’t have to import these hard, goods into the country. You don’t have to bring your dental chairs. You don’t have to bring your compressors. You don’t have to bring anything. I will have that for you. My hope is that more and more nonprofits will see this as a possibility. They can fundraise for their groups, get bigger groups maybe, and more and more people. I venture to say that if I set up a five chair clinic, because that’ll go anywhere, I could potentially run that clinic give me 18 months to two years, 40 weeks out of the year. And if I can run one five chair clinic 40 weeks out of the year, I can do two, I can do three, I can do four. I can change and I can go to different countries in the Caribbean. I can provide these setups. They’ll show up in road cases, in a container, and I’ll have a team that will set them up, tear them down and maintain them. None of these volunteer groups will have to worry about that.

Hugh Ballou:
So this is huge because you’re getting more done through collaboration. If somebody wanted to actually volunteer the time and do the work, they wouldn’t have to do all the infrastructure piece of it. And this would open up. We’ve had medical groups on the show that doctors could, like in Peru, doctors could take a two week vacation and take a mission team and do their specialty in medicine. Without having to set up any of the infrastructure. So this opens up a huge collaboration for people who, who are philanthropists for time and talent. Yes. And if they, in this group, particularly they, the doctors raised the money for the mission trip and they went and did a segment. So this is huge that you’ve got the facility. And so it’s a, it’s an opening for people who want to do good philanthropy. Technically it’s the love of humankind. Yeah. And if that’s what you are a philanthropist, you’re, you’re sharing love for people who need it the most. So talk for a minute. So that collaboration piece, there’s so many organizations that could really use somebody like you in their specialty. So this is. This is targeted right now for Jamaica. It’s targeted for dental care primarily. But as I hear you, it could expand in the future. So talk a little bit more about, there’s the need. There were so many people that want it and they can’t get into the system in a timely manner. So you’re providing an alternative for them without cost. Is that correct?

Paddy Shannon:
Absolutely. This is the goal, at least in my past history in nonprofit, it’s always been free to the patient. We don’t charge anything.

Hugh Ballou:
So what is the result of this work? What impact will you have on the population?

Paddy Shannon:
Well, I can go with the organization that we’ve been volunteering with and it’s rather large. So as an example, inside of Jamaica alone, I know for positive, absolute fact that while I’ve been associated with them and my wife has been associated with them, they have grown from a very small organization in a dental community to probably seeing in excess of 350,000 patients in Jamaica in the time that they’ve been in country. That doesn’t mean it’s 350,000 unique patients. I’d like to say we’ve never seen anybody twice. I’m sure we have. But they do eight weeks of heavy dental there every year. And in a given clinic week, I can use mine as the example, in a given clinic week where we have two or three clinics running at a time, We’ll do three quarters of a million dollars in value for dental. We will do probably right near 2,000 patients in a week. It’s a massive undertaking to get that done. That is a lot of people coming through the door.

Hugh Ballou:
And wow, when you have dental pain, nothing else matters. You can’t do anything if you have a toothache or a problem. So that’s really important. Now, you set up this nonprofit. How recently did you set this up?

Paddy Shannon:
The people who are on my board, we started putting it together about three and a half years ago. We thought that we could find a way to do what we wanted to do and open the horizons up for more people. Um, really, it is completely off the ground with the I. R. S. Um, as we speak, and we decided to pull all the triggers, um, basically commit. The horses are out of the gate. We gotta go. Um, we’ve been kind of holding back, putting things together. Um, the thing that tipped it over is we were in contact with a very large religious group in the Caribbean. And we’re very good friends with one of the main movers there. And their communities are growing. And so off to the side, they have this primary school that in June of this year is going to be empty. It’s no longer large enough for the community. And the organization doesn’t know what to do with the building. And in a country like this, if you leave the building open and unoccupied, somebody will move in and you’ll lose your property. just about two weeks ago, they offered it to us for free. It’s not really free. It’s a dollar a year for 100 years. And it’s a big facility. It’s on a half acre. We’ve got five buildings. And with that landing in our lap, we couldn’t not jump on board and just go. We had to now. We’ve got to go do it.

Hugh Ballou:
One of the things, let me probe a minute. You talked about your board and their commitment. Many times, visionaries want to start a non-profit, and they have trouble getting others to say yes to the board. You have a good board. How did you get them to say yes, and how helpful have they been?

Paddy Shannon:
They’ve been incredibly helpful. I want more people. I believe that, you know, As a group, we need to steer ourselves very clear of what I can see as the founder syndrome, where our fingers are in every pie and everything has to come through us. And I don’t want that to happen. I want our vision to be there and I want our goal to be there, but I want everybody in on the game. So to that end, we’ve been primarily in the dental field, I’ve got people who are in other parts of the country who are on our board that are very good at fundraising, that are very good in their industry specialties. Their input is more important to me than my feeling of, I have to be in control. I don’t want to be in control. to get enough people on board. And it seems that enthusiasm in this regard makes a difference because when I start talking to people one-on-one, they get excited and I get excited. And if they’re excited and I can show them, here’s a broad spectrum of what I need, and they get excited and they wanna jump on board, I don’t have a problem with that. What are you bringing to us? If you’re bringing expertise, great. If you’re bringing money, even better, I’d love money. It buys equipment, but we need to have more than just the three or four or five of us that we have. We need probably in five years, I see a board of 10 or 15 people. I see people from all avenues of the medical community, potentially as advisors, either directly voting or advisory board members. I don’t know how that’s gonna play out. I haven’t been in it on this level long enough.

Hugh Ballou:
Good for you. Good for you. Well, you know, as a wise leader that says, I don’t know everything and I’m, I’m learning. So you didn’t wait to get all your ducks in a row. You got the basic things and you’re moving forward. Now you spent a number of years there and you know, the need and you know, the system. And so you’re complimenting, you’re not competing with what’s there. You’re complimenting that other nonprofit. Is that correct?

Paddy Shannon:
Absolutely. If they want to utilize our services, and I don’t see why they would not, right? They do have a lot of equipment down there, but I’ve worked on every piece of it. I’ve touched every piece of it. There’s a piece of my blood in all of it. I know what it looks like, and if I can provide a service to them that will help them expand their operations, I don’t see why they wouldn’t do it. Right now, they can commit to eight weeks of heavy dentistry. They also have a two-week window where they do just children, like they go to schools and they work on kids. I could potentially have it so that their volunteer groups come down any time of the year, it wouldn’t matter.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s great. And you’ll have a system to coordinate all of those different groups. So your, your organization implementation kind of guy, which sometimes visionaries don’t have those skillsets. So it’s good to have somebody with that skillset and a passion who you’re not a specialist in the medical field, but you’re a specialist in empowering them to do their work. Am I hearing it correctly?

Paddy Shannon:
I would think so. I’m into logistics. That’s what I do for that organization. I’m their head logistics dude. So logistics is everything. You don’t get anything done without getting the stuff there first. And that includes everything from the maintenance cycle of it all the way through to the actual item. And if I can fix that part, that is a huge problem for most people doing World Health stuff. They don’t have access to that.

Hugh Ballou:
This is really key. And so I think there’s a lot of nonprofits that need a person like you, but right now people can build on what you’re doing. If you’ve got a skill set, if they’ve got a skill set, they want to volunteer. Now we cannot give people a link for a website because it’s being built right after this episode. So when people come back to this page, this is on a page on our website, we will have a link. For the website, it’s on the website. I’m guessing they’ll find out about the program. They’ll also have a page where they can put in. You said the volunteer stuff. What’s that going to look like?

Paddy Shannon:
For the volunteer side, basically, it’s going to start off. You know, I’ve talked to my web guy a bit. It’s going to start off with a set of queries. You’re interested in us. Why, why are you interested? You know, we’re going to put our name out there on every social media. We’re going to be everywhere. Um, hopefully people will see us and I’m hoping to attract, you know, a dental office with, you know, eight people in it or, or maybe an entire school with a whole bunch of people in it. I don’t know. Um, they’re gonna, start answering questions. If you’re interested, you wanna go do non-profit work, here’s the countries we’re in. If you’re interested, go to our calendar. You go to our calendar, it’s going to have a questionnaire you answer out that tells you everything. I don’t do this for the volunteers for free. I want the volunteer groups, they’re gonna have to pay for access to our systems, but the access to our systems is to pay the people who work on their systems. So our goal is the, the three people who are in the clinic that are Jamaican in this case, they’re renting equipment from these three people. These three people are setting it up, operating it, making it functional for you. I want to pay these people 12 months out of 12, just like people here get a job 12 months out of 12. So that the marriage of, you know, you come into the organization with a question of can I volunteer? Here’s a method for you to do it. You set your calendar date, You pick the time, I will have it sitting there. There will be people waiting for you. Is that gonna get you from the airport to the clinic? Probably not. You’re gonna have to figure that out. But we’ve been doing that for so long down there. We’ve made a hundred trips to the Caribbean. We know how to do that. We can answer your questions. We can help you set that up. We can connect you with people who can help you do that. But that’s on the volunteer group. I’m not going to do that.

Hugh Ballou:
So that’s, that’s, um, customary. Um, I’ve been a church staff member led many mission trips and that’s the model you choose the mission. You fund it yourself and you get there. Service clubs, other, other community groups. That’s customary. You’re going to do it. You, you finance your way and you know, you’re there to give, but many times you get a lot more out of it yourself when you go and share with other people. So Paddy, we’ve covered a lot of stuff in this short interview. We’re going to invite people to the website later. It’ll be on this page, thenonprofitexchange.com. Tell us the name of your organization. I’m not sure we’ve said that.

Paddy Shannon:
My organization, our board of directors, we decided on the word Great Works. That’s W-O-R-X, Great Works, Inc. We think everybody should be performing great works. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.

Hugh Ballou:
Oh, that is the best closing statement we could ask for. Paddy Shannon, you’ve been an inspiration today. Thank you for your good work and thank you for sharing it with our audience today on The Nonprofit Exchange.

Paddy Shannon:
Thank you, sir.