Posted on Dec 03, 2018
The Club welcomed prospective member Mike Spellman and the guest speaker Bill Phillips.  Mr. Phillips was representing the Medtronic Foundation and providing information about a trip he made as part of Medtronic's Global Health Initiative.  Bill is typically a manager of new product development at Medtronic. He reviewed a trip he took with others in July, 2018 to rural areas in South Africa with a goal of improving health outcomes to under served populations.  Medtronic used its health rise program to expand access to care by partnering with Project Hope and Expectra Health Care in an effort to reduce the incidence of non-communicable diseases (NCD's). He noted that two-thirds of global deaths are from NCD's.  As part of the program, they would provide the appropriate medical devices to community health care workers. These health care workers would go door to door in communities to check for diabetes and perform other routine health checks. The health care workers would help educate the population about methods to reduce the incidence of NCD's like diabetes, obesity and heart disease, etc.