Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity in Southeast Asia (The Equity Initiative) at the China Medical Board seeks to improve health equity throughout the region, particularly among vulnerable and marginalized populations, through deploying a multisectoral community of Fellows to address social determinants, policy and systems reform. Chuck made his first of many trips to Viet Nam in 1998 and began investing the following year, with an initial grant to the East Meets West Foundation for its heart health program. Over the next 14 years, Atlantic deployed $382 million in resources to improve the well-being of the Vietnamese people through contributions to higher education and population health. Chuck’s initial attraction to Viet Nam was rooted in historical factors, an affinity for the culture, and the promise the future held in the late 1990s. The painful legacies of the American war and the sense that the Vietnamese people had been treated unfairly through no fault of their own, combined with personal familiarity with the region’s cultures stemming from his D.F.S. business interests, attracted his attention. Viet Nam’s reform policies were beginning to pay off, and the intersection of its development trajectory with Chuck’s entrepreneurial instincts presented an opportunity to invest in a people whose character and culture he found appealing. He saw in the Vietnamese hard workers who were undervalued, which in turn created an opportunity for Atlantic to add value. “When we first went into Viet Nam,” Chris recalled, “it was in formation in terms of systems development and policies. It was also a place where a modest investment of $5 million could build and equip a hospital.” Capital improvements in education and health, including hospitals, schools of public health, universities, learning resource centers and laboratories, as well as Viet Nam’s grassroots system of primary health care clinics, accounted for about 50% of Atlantic’s investments ($193 million). These investments had an emphasis on improving the lives of children, youth and people with disabilities, especially the visually impaired. Under Chris’ guidance, the main goal of the population health work was to build the system’s capacity to solve public health problems by using the issues of the day as vehicles. To accomplish this, Atlantic worked at all levels in the system, and with both government agencies and NGOs throughout the country. This systems approach enhanced the effectiveness of the building projects through complementary investments in human resources,
Facing page: Atlantic Fellows for Southeast Asia at the Senior Fellows Global Convening in Oxford in 2019; dancing creates connections across the diverse cultures of the global fellowship. Credit: Lee Atherton.
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