DOCS for Hope - (641) 229-1614

DOCS for Hope is committed to providing direct medical care for needy populations throughout the world.

Our story:

Our group began as 6 first year family medicine residents who shared a common goal - to both serve on the mission field in developing nations and practice broad spectrum family medicine in the United States. After completing a Family Medicine residency which focused on Family Medicine with Obstetrics (including Operative Obstetrics), our physicians sensed a need for further expanding the skill set of primary care physicians. With this desire, we created a year of medical fellowship training which included intense training in Tropical Medicine (including HIV/AIDS), Trauma, Orthopedics, Dentistry, Burn care, Anesthesia, and General Surgery. Our experiences gained during this year of fellowship training will forever shape our lives. This legacy lives on today in the Via Christi International Family Medicine Fellowship, which continues prepare family medicine doctors for service in the world’s toughest places.

Our unique practice allows our physicians to serve in developing nations 3 months of the year, while still maintaining and serving our rural community during the remainder of the year on a “mission rotation” schedule.

The first season of blended rural practice and missions medicine was a great success in terms of integration of our families into New Hampton, Iowa, the small community which we now call home. We continue to build relationships in our town which grow deeper as time passes by. Each of our physicians committed to serve in Zimbabwe during their “mission rotation.” Returning to the location of our Fellowship training experience in order to serve and teach during that year was a very joyful experience.

As we are in need of a long term service site in which to pour our efforts, we are rotating through a number of hospitals in developing countries this year. Our group has had an impact in multiple developing countries this year including Zimbabwe, Haiti, and Ecuador.

Our future goals involve establishing a site overseas in an developing country in which we can invest our lives long term, while at the same time providing service to our current rural Iowa community. We hope to integrate our community into this fulfilling service. Indeed, we have many requests for community involvement on a regular basis. We hope that this support, coupled with newly found support from private philanthropic entities will make the advancement of our efforts possible.

Such efforts may include, but are not limited to, staffing and construction of health care facilities where there are none, care of children with HIV, public health staffing and sanitation, and teaching national physicians and staff.

Tags: Charity Organization,Family Doctor,Disaster Relief