International Medical Corps maximizes the impact of its efforts around the world by working with partners to improve awareness and access to information, seek out bold and innovative approaches to difficult and pressing challenges, and seize opportunities through partnerships and collaboration.

Building A Better Response Project

In partnership with Concern Worldwide and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, International Medical Corps is leading a global project designed to provide workers from international and local national non-government organizations (NGOs) with the tools and knowledge to better engage with the international system that coordinates humanitarian aid. The Building a Better Response (BBR) project addresses critical knowledge gaps in the humanitarian community, improves overall coordination among the system’s many players and helps those players better respond to the needs of those hit by crisis. Learning tools include an online course offered in Arabic, English and French that now has more than 50,000 registered users globally. We have also conducted more than 50 in-person workshops on four continents to build the capacity of national and international NGOs.

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Fielding a Technical Rapid Response Team

With support from USAID, and working in close collaboration with UNICEF and the Global Nutrition Cluster, International Medical Corps is partnering with Save the Children and Action Against Hunger on a project to strengthen the collective role of nutrition providers during an emergency response. Members of a team that includes five nutrition experts—three of them from International Medical Corps—have deployed more than 20 times to nine countries since it was formed in August 2015, including Haiti, Yemen, Ethiopia and Nigeria. The experts have performed tasks ranging from conducting nutrition assessments, managing technical training and strengthening existing capacity to addressing critical nutrition-related issues such as the need to overcome barriers to sufficient infant and young-child feeding during an emergency.

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Collaborating with FedEx

In a groundbreaking collaboration with FedEx, International Medical Corps maintains an Emergency Field Hospital that can provide urgently needed health, trauma and surgical care after a disaster. Over the last two years, International Medical Corps has utilized the global logistics and supply-chain expertise of FedEx to increase the flexibility of these lifesaving assets to deploy quickly and meet a variety of health needs. We retain the capacity to launch a large-scale trauma response hospital when required. And we have the ability to respond effectively and efficiently to a range of health emergencies–including providing basic healthcare services, delivering nutrition interventions, responding to infectious disease outbreaks and more. FedEx stores the hospital near its World Hub in Memphis, TN, leveraging its global fleet and logistics capability to quickly deliver the hospital nearly anywhere in the world after disaster strikes. This speed ensures that International Medical Corps’ emergency volunteers and well-trained, experienced global staff can immediately begin saving lives.

Partnering to Build a More Effective Response to the Next Ebola Outbreak

After playing an important role in fighting the 2014-2015 West Africa outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), International Medical Corps joined with an array of prestigious partners to conduct research that can be applied to fight any future epidemic more effectively. One example: promising results published in 2016 of the first randomized controlled trial in humans of a drug, known as ZMapp, directed specifically at patients infected with the Ebola virus. The project, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), involved International Medical Corps working with government health entities of four West African nations, plus other academic, government and non-government agencies.

Read more about our Ebola research

Sharing Data about Ebola Virus Disease (EVD)

We are partnering with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the West African Health Organization, the West African Taskforce for Emerging and Re-emerging Infection (WATER), Oxford University, the Welcome Trust and the World Health Organization as co-founders and steering committee members of the EVD Data Sharing Platform, with a goal to collect and assure unfettered access to all clinical, laboratory and epidemiological data collected during the 2014-2015 epidemic to strengthen the global response to any future outbreak.

Strengthening National NGO Capacity

Training for national non-governmental staff

Strengthening the capacity of national non-governmental organizations to respond to humanitarian crises in their countries and regions, through needs assessment, training workshops and the development of work plans for targeted interventions by appropriate subject-matter experts.

Global Nutrition Cluster Rapid Response Project

The Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC) and its partners, including International Medical Corps, aim to provide effective, predictable and timely support to humanitarian action, strengthening its ability to fulfill commitments made to humanitarian partners through the cluster approach and to align these commitments with reforms being undertaken in the framework of the “Transformative Agenda.” To improve inter-cluster collaboration and streamline global support practices, the partners are focusing their efforts toward the support of global coordination mechanisms to enhance country-level coordination and response through a more consistent approach to providing technical support, engaging partners and supporting global surge mechanisms such as cluster Rapid Response Teams. This effort is made possibly with the support of UNICEF.

The Technical Rapid Response Team Strengthens Nutrition Humanitarian Response

With support from USAID and working in close collaboration with UNICEF and the Global Nutrition Cluster, International Medical Corps is partnering with Save the Children and Action Against Hunger on a project to strengthen the collective role of nutrition during an emergency response. Members of the team that includes five nutrition experts—three of them from International Medical Corps—have deployed 22 times to nine countries in the 18 months since it was formed in August 2015, including Haiti, Yemen, Ethiopia and Nigeria. The experts have performed tasks that range from conducting nutrition assessments, managing technical training and strengthening existing capacity to addressing critical nutrition-related issues such as the need to overcome barriers to sufficient infant and young-child feeding during an emergency.

Learn more about TRRT

Mental Health for Primary Healthcare Toolkit for Use in Humanitarian Settings

Funded by USAID/OFDA and using WHO mhGAP-IG Intervention Guidelines, we documented lessons learned from mental health integration programs in Philippines, South Sudan and Central African Republic. This work resulted in International Medical Corps’ 2016 “Mental Health Integration into General Healthcare: A Step-Wise Approach,” which lays out guidance on a six-step approach to integrating mental healthcare in humanitarian settings. The toolkit facilitates the training of emergency health professionals in the front-line management of priority mental health conditions, to enable the integration of mental health into primary care. Next steps of the program include summarizing the survey mapping results and conducting in-depth interview with stakeholders.

Health Sector Update, Fiscal Year 2016 >

Project Description>

Mental Health Integration into General Healthcare: a Step-Wise Approach >

Centers for Disease Control: Response and Capacity Building

International Medical Corps partners with the CDC on a range of emergency response and training activities, including:

  • Disease surveillance and response in Mali, Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo
  • Oral cholera vaccine in emergency settings in Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Niger
  • Oral cholera vaccine campaign in Haiti
  • HIV/AIDS key populations program in Kenya
  • Ebola preparedness and response in Sierra Leone and Guinea

Managing Gender-based Violence in Emergencies (MGBViE) learning program

The United Nations Population Fund, International Medical Corps and Human Rights Education Associates have created a multi-phase global learning program to increase the number of gender-based violence (GBV) specialists with the technical knowledge and skills needed to respond in emergencies, including natural disaster, conflicts and population displacement, and to lead the design and implementation of GBV prevention and response interventions.

Global Mentorship Initiative

International Medical Corps is working with UNFPA to pilot a GBV mentorship initiative that is being rolled out during the second year of the program in 2017. Alumni of the first in-person training in 2016 have been matched with mentors who were selected through a competitive call for mentors. Alumni are able to speak with mentors about programming challenges, share concerns, ask for career advice and other guidance. International Medical Corps and UNFPA hold regular check-in calls with mentors to facilitate the exchange of best practices and lessons learned.

Support for the launch of a Gender-based Violence Area of Responsibility Community of Practice

International Medical Corps continues to partner with UNFPA on the development and implementation of the GBV Area of Responsibility Community of Practice. The initiative’s goal is to strengthen professional support, provide continued learning opportunities and resources and encourage information-sharing between GBV specialists.