Why a university
Five billion people cannot reach safe, affordable surgery when they need it. The shortage is not of operations. It is of people trained to do them where they live.
The problem Global Surgery University exists to solve, as framed by the 2015 Lancet Commission on Global Surgery
The Lancet Commission put numbers on what every surgeon who has worked in a district hospital already knew: roughly 143 million additional operations a year are needed in low- and middle-income countries, about a third of all deaths worldwide are from conditions that surgery could treat, and the Commission's 2030 target of 20 surgical, anesthetic, and obstetric providers per 100,000 people is not reachable by training physicians alone. Nowhere is the gap wider than in sub-Saharan Africa.
Mozambique answered that problem in 1984. Facing a near-total absence of surgeons outside its capital, the country trained non-physician clinicians, técnicos de cirurgia, to perform emergency and essential surgery at district hospitals. Three decades of published evidence followed. Técnicos delivered cesarean sections and emergency laparotomies with outcomes comparable to physicians, at a fraction of the training cost, and stayed: seven years after graduation, the large majority were still working in the district hospitals they were trained for, while nearly every physician posted to the same hospitals had left.
Global Surgery University takes that model, the Lancet Commission's targets, and the perioperative and critical care training AthleticsMD® physicians have delivered with JHU-GAPP since 2022, and integrates them into a single five-year program: one institution that takes a clinician from foundational sciences to independent, supervised surgical practice in the hospital that needs them, and that measures itself by whether they are still there a decade later.
Explore the numbers
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Global Surgery University is registered in Nigeria as a nonprofit organization, giving the five-year program a legal home on the continent it serves. In the United States it operates as a program of Healing Vessels International, the 501(c)(3) through which AthleticsMD® channels its global health work and receives tax-deductible support. Its foundation courses run today under the JHU-GAPP partnership. Degree-granting authority and national credentialing for the full five-year pathway are being pursued with the relevant regulators in each partner country. Until that recognition is granted, completion is documented by certificate.
The five-year program
From first anatomy lecture to the operating room, without leaving the district.
The program is integrated in two senses. The perioperative disciplines, surgery, anesthesia, critical care, and nursing, are taught together because they work together. And training happens at the hospitals where graduates will practice, so nothing learned depends on equipment or staffing that will not be there on the first day of independent work.
Foundations
Anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and clinical assessment taught with a surgical and perioperative emphasis. Infection prevention, sterile technique, and patient safety from the first term. Entry is open to nurses, clinical officers, anesthesia technicians, and other health professionals with clinical experience, the workforce the técnicos model proved can be trained to operate.
Classroom and skills laboratory. Partner teaching hospital.
Perioperative and critical care
The disciplines that determine whether a technically good operation ends in a discharge. Fundamental Critical Care Support, anesthesia safety and airway management, mechanical ventilation, resuscitation, and management of the deteriorating patient. This year absorbs the courses AthleticsMD® and JHU-GAPP have delivered since 2022, now sequenced rather than standalone.
SCCM FCCS curriculum, simulation, supervised ICU and theatre rotations.
Operative training
Graduated, supervised operative responsibility in essential and emergency surgery, organized around the procedures the Lancet Commission identified as the measure of a functioning district hospital: laparotomy, cesarean section, and management of open fractures, alongside hernia repair, wound and burn care, obstetric emergencies, and trauma. Case logs, direct observation, and outcome review for every trainee.
District hospital placement with rotating faculty and remote case review.
Supervised independent practice
Trainees hold their own operating list and call schedule at a partner district hospital under structured remote and periodic on-site supervision, and begin teaching Year 1 and 2 students. Graduation requires a completed case log, audited outcomes, and a faculty attestation of readiness for independent practice.
District hospital. Graduates are eligible to join the faculty pipeline.
Threaded through all five years: systems and research
Oxygen and energy infrastructure operation and maintenance through the AIRS project, quality improvement methods, and participation in the G4 Alliance multinational surgical registry, so graduates can run a safe theatre and describe its outcomes in the literature.
Delivered with SCCM, the Institute of Global Perioperative Care, and Global Surgery Academic Scholars.
Program schematic
Five years, two settings, four gates.
Training moves from a partner teaching hospital in Years 1 and 2 to a district hospital in Years 3 to 5. The move is deliberate: after Year 2, nothing a trainee learns depends on equipment or staffing that will be absent on the first day of independent practice. Progression at each gate requires a passed assessment, not time served.
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Case logs, assessments, registry data, and scholar research output are recorded in AMDana, the AthleticsMD® research and grants management platform. Bellwether procedures: laparotomy, cesarean section, and management of open fractures, the three operations the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery (2015) uses as the marker of a district hospital able to deliver essential and emergency surgical care.
How a trainee advances
Progression is earned at each gate.
Gate 1: End of Year 1
Basic sciences and skills examinations. A trainee who does not pass repeats the failed component once; the program is not extended indefinitely.
Gate 2: End of Year 2
FCCS certification and simulated critical care and airway scenarios. Passing Gate 2 is the requirement for placement at a district hospital.
Gate 3: End of Year 3
Case log minimum, directly observed procedural skills, and active participation in morbidity and mortality review at the district site.
Gate 4: End of Year 4
Bellwether case log as first operator with audited outcomes. Faculty attest that the trainee can be trusted with an independent list.
Graduation: End of Year 5
Five-year case log, audited outcomes within program thresholds, evaluation as a teacher, and faculty attestation of readiness for independent practice.
Who enters, who graduates, and what the evidence predicts
Built on what worked in Mozambique.
Entry
Clinicians already at the district hospital
- Nurses, midwives, clinical officers, anesthesia technicians, and other licensed health professionals with clinical experience
- Nominated by, or committed to return to, a partner district hospital
- Basic sciences entrance assessment and interview
- Physicians may enter at Year 2 or Year 3 on assessment
Graduation
Independent, supervised, and still there
- Certificate of completion from Global Surgery University; national credential where recognized
- Posting to a partner district hospital with a defined supervision and call structure
- Eligible for the faculty pipeline and to supervise trainees at the site
- Followed for retention and outcomes for ten years after graduation
Evidence and targets
Why five years and why non-physicians
- Lancet 2030 target
- 20 surgical, anesthetic, and obstetric providers per 100,000
- Unmet need
- About 143 million additional operations a year in LMICs
- Mozambique model
- Non-physician técnicos de cirurgia trained since 1984
- Outcomes
- Comparable to physicians for cesarean and emergency laparotomy in published series
- Retention
- Most técnicos still at district hospitals at seven years; almost no physicians
How it works
One system. Four entities, each doing what it is built for.
A five-year program needs a funding source that outlasts grant cycles, a nonprofit that can hold it, and an academic partner that can validate it. Global Surgery University sits inside the structure that already provides all three.
Clinical and commercial engine
AthleticsMD®
Maryland's first independent CORF. Clinical revenue from prehabilitation, rehabilitation, and preventive care in Columbia and Laurel funds the training work and pays the physicians' time. Builds and owns AMDana, the platform the whole system runs on.
US nonprofit home of Global Surgery University
Healing Vessels International
501(c)(3) focused on surgical capacity building in West Africa. Holds Global Surgery University, receives tax-deductible support, and administers scholar stipends, trainee bursaries, and site agreements.
Cornerstone collaborative
Global Surgery University
Five-year integrated surgical training program for Africa; registered nonprofit in Nigeria; cornerstone collaborative of AthleticsMD®. The training institution: curriculum, faculty, case logs, credential pathway, and the Global Surgery Academic Scholar (GSAS) Program.
Academic affiliation
JHU-GAPP
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. Provides IRB oversight, faculty appointments, curriculum validation, research infrastructure, and publication channels.
Global Impact
Strategic Global Partnership
Safe surgery in a district hospital takes more than a surgeon. It takes an anesthesia provider, a critical care nurse, oxygen that flows, power that stays on, a research record that proves the outcome, and money that arrives on time. No single organization does all of that. AthleticsMD® works inside a partnership of five that, together, do.
- Partners
- JHU-GAPP, Global Surgery University, Healing Vessels International, IGPC, G4 Alliance
- Active since
- 2022
- Providers trained
- More than 200, Liberia and The Gambia
- Countries
- Liberia, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, United States
- Shared platform
- AMDana research and grants management system
The partnership
Five organizations, one operating system.
Each partner brings something the others cannot: a university's research infrastructure, a nonprofit's ability to receive and steward philanthropy, an institute with three decades of critical care work across Africa, a global advocacy coalition with a WHO-supported registry, and a clinical practice whose revenue keeps the work funded between grants. AthleticsMD® is the clinical and commercial operating entity, and its AMDana platform is the system of record all five work in.
Academic partner
Johns Hopkins Global Alliance of Perioperative Professionals
Home: Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
Founded by: Dr. John B. Sampson
Director: Dr. Imaobong Chinedozi
Regional Director: Dr. Ifeanyi David Chinedozi
JHU-GAPP's mission is relevant, appropriate, affordable, and sustainable improvement of anesthesia and perioperative care in austere environments, through training, research, clinical care improvement, and the dissemination of knowledge. Its motto, closing the gap on healthcare disparities, is also its operating test: does this intervention leave the health system stronger after the visiting team has gone home?
With AthleticsMD®, GAPP has trained roughly 200 perioperative providers since 2022 at F.J. Grant Memorial Hospital in Liberia and Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital in The Gambia, using the Society of Critical Care Medicine's Fundamental Critical Care Support curriculum and simulation-based education. Its research produced the qualitative study of oxygen scarcity at F.J. Grant, published in the Journal of Global Surgery in December 2025, and the Johns Hopkins StAAR-funded assessment of increased oxygen access at Edward Francis Small.
Within the partnership, GAPP is the academic spine. Work conducted through it carries Johns Hopkins institutional affiliation, IRB oversight, and publication channels, and its faculty form the core teaching corps for Years 1 and 2 of the Global Surgery University program.
Nonprofit hub
Healing Vessels International
Status: US 501(c)(3) nonprofit
Focus: Surgical capacity building in West Africa
Founding Chairman: Ifeanyi David Chinedozi, MD
Co-Founder and Chief Medical Director: Ima Chinedozi, MD, MPH, MHS
Phone: (855) 672-4631
Healing Vessels International is the 501(c)(3) through which tax-deductible philanthropic support for the partnership flows. It is the US home of Global Surgery University, administers scholar stipends and trainee bursaries, holds site agreements with partner hospitals, and serves as fiscal partner on grant applications where a nonprofit applicant is required.
HVI exists so that the clinical enterprise and the charitable enterprise stay properly separated. AthleticsMD® earns revenue and builds infrastructure; HVI receives gifts and grants and applies them to training and capacity building under nonprofit governance, with every dollar tracked in AMDana from obligation to closeout.
Institutional partner
Institute of Global Perioperative Care
Founder and board chairman: Dr. John B. Sampson
Collaborations: AIRS project with SCCM and JHU-GAPP; grant-funded implementation with AthleticsMD®
The Institute of Global Perioperative Care was founded by Dr. Sampson after more than three decades of global health engagement across Africa, from establishing critical care training programs in Sierra Leone and Nigeria to leading the Africa Infrastructure Relief and Support project with the Society of Critical Care Medicine. IGPC carries that institutional history into the partnership.
IGPC is a co-lead of AIRS, the collaboration strengthening medical oxygen and energy infrastructure in West African hospitals across The Gambia, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, funded by Direct Relief. It also partners with AthleticsMD® on grant-funded implementation, with AthleticsMD® providing database architecture, quality assurance, cost-effectiveness analysis, and in-country procurement and disbursement through AMDana.
Global advocacy and registry partner
G4 Alliance
Full name: Global Alliance for Surgical, Obstetric, Trauma and Anaesthesia Care
Board member: Dr. John B. Sampson
Registry: WHO-supported multinational surgical registry, presented at CUGH 2026
The G4 Alliance is the global coalition advocating for surgical, obstetric, trauma, and anesthesia care as a component of universal health coverage. Through Dr. Sampson's board membership and Dr. Imaobong Chinedozi's presentation of the Alliance's WHO-supported multinational surgical registry at the 2026 Consortium of Universities for Global Health Conference, the partnership sits inside the policy conversation rather than outside it.
The registry matters most to the partnership as data. It is entering its pilot phase in more than ten low- and middle-income countries and is designed to capture surgical outcomes at the district hospital level, exactly where Global Surgery University graduates will practice. Trainees contribute to it from Year 2, and Global Surgery Academic Scholars on the data science track work on its architecture and analysis.
Who runs it
Leadership on both continents.
A program that places a trainee in a district hospital for three of its five years cannot be run from one time zone. Four people carry it: two founders in Maryland and Baltimore who set the curriculum and hold the academic affiliation, and two regional directors in West Africa who make a training site real before a cohort arrives in it.
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Faculty of the partnership
Teaching faculty are drawn from the Johns Hopkins Global Alliance of Perioperative Professionals and the Institute of Global Perioperative Care, whose founder and board chairman, Dr. John B. Sampson, co-leads the AIRS infrastructure work and sits on the G4 Alliance board. Faculty appointments and IRB oversight run through the JHU-GAPP affiliation.
Teach, partner, or fund
If you are a surgeon or intensivist who wants to teach a rotation, a hospital that wants to become a training site, or a funder who wants to see the cohort roster and the ledger behind it, the fastest route in is a phone call.
The platform underneath all of it
Public health work fails in the gaps between the people doing it. AMDana closes the gaps.
A training cohort in Banjul, a grant deadline in Baltimore, an IRB amendment in Monrovia, a manuscript with eleven co-authors on three continents. AMDana is the proprietary platform AthleticsMD® built to run exactly this kind of work: every task, project, protocol, award, and paper in one system of record, so a program the size of Global Surgery University can be coordinated by a small team without losing anything.
Most research and global health teams stitch together a task app, a shared drive, a grants spreadsheet, a reference manager, email, and a messaging tool, then spend their best hours reconciling them. AMDana replaces the stitching. Work is organized by project. Grants, IRB records, manuscripts, and evidence reviews attach to the project they belong to. Every deadline in the system rolls up to a single view of what is about to happen, and every action leaves an audit trail.
It is the system of record for the JHU-GAPP training cohorts, the AIRS infrastructure project, the Health System Readiness Index study, and the grant portfolio that funds them. Global Surgery University runs on it from day one: trainee case logs, faculty schedules, site agreements, registry data, and the research output of every Global Surgery Academic Scholar.
Built and owned by AthleticsMD®. Hosted in the United States. Designed for teams that answer to funders, ethics boards, and patients at the same time, and the first platform of its kind to put an AI assistant inside that system of record rather than beside it.
Projects, tasks, and focus
Board and list views per project, personal task queues, and a single Focus view that answers the only question that matters at 6 a.m.: what needs me today.
Grants, end to end
Opportunities, applications, internal review and approval routing, awards, budget periods, and sponsor deliverables, with a pipeline view by stage and a portfolio view across the whole organization.
IRB and regulatory
Protocol records, amendments, continuing reviews, and the regulatory packet for each study, tied to the project and the award that funds it.
Manuscripts and journals
Author lists and roles, section drafting, citation import, and journal submission tracking, so a paper with co-authors in three countries moves without a single lost email.
Evidence syntheses
Question and PICO, search strategies and runs, dual screening with conflict resolution, and a PRISMA flow that builds itself from the work.
Team, training, and AI
Partner organizations and research roles, secure messaging and meetings, forms and document control, an Academy for onboarding and training, and Ask AMDana, described below.
An AI that knows your grants, your protocols, your cohorts, and your deadlines, because it lives where they do.
AMDana is the first collaborative platform built for global health researchers and academicians that puts tasks, grants, IRB records, manuscripts, evidence syntheses, and an AI assistant inside one system of record. The AI is not bolted on beside the work. It reads the same records the team does, and answers from them.
Ask AMDana what is blocking a project and it reads the project. Ask what a board would find missing from an IRB packet and it checks the packet. Ask what should come first today and it weighs every open task, award milestone, continuing review, and journal deadline across the organization, then tells you, with the records it used. Grant Intelligence reads a funding opportunity against your organization's profile and returns a plain verdict, likely eligible or likely not, with the criteria it leaned on and an instruction to verify. The Literature module searches PubMed, finds a free copy of the paper when one exists, tells you what is worth remembering about it, and sends it straight into a systematic review whose PRISMA numbers recompute themselves.
For a research team spread across Baltimore, Banjul, and Monrovia, that is the difference between a principal investigator who spends Sunday reconstructing the state of the program from six inboxes and one who asks a single question on Monday morning and gets a true answer.
Grounded, not generative for its own sake
Every answer is built from records in your workspace and cites them. Where AMDana lacks a fact, it says so. It will not invent a contact, a citation, or a number.
The method is protected
In evidence syntheses, screening is blinded and dual, disagreements go to adjudication, and every PRISMA count is recomputed from the work. AI accelerates the reading; it never casts a vote.
Built for the reviewer, the auditor, and the IRB
Approval routing, MFA-gated grant files, continuing-review tracking, and an audit trail on every action. The AI helps you meet the standard; the platform proves you met it.
One question, the whole organization
Focus, tasks, awards, protocols, manuscripts, and partner sites roll up to a single view, so the answer to "what is late across this organization" is one screen, not a week of meetings.
AMDana for your organization
Built for teams that run research, training, or grant-funded programs.
A public sandbox with sample data is available for teams that run research, training, or grant-funded programs. Open it, work through a project, a grant, and a review, and ask AMDana a question about them. Inquiries: sales@amdana.app
Try it now · live sandbox
Work inside AMDana. Everything on this screen is real and responds.
Send a message in Connect, cast a vote, join a meeting, assign a task, screen a paper, draft a manuscript section, test grant eligibility, then ask AMDana a question. The assistant answers from what you just did. Sample workspace: Global Surgery University.
Your sandbox changes are kept on this device until you reset. Nothing you type here is stored or sent anywhere. For a full AMDana workspace for your organization: sales@amdana.app
Where we train
Partner sites
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Liberia
F.J. Grant Memorial Hospital
Greenville, Sinoe County, Liberia. Early implementation site for the AIRS oxygen and solar project, and a recurring training site since 2022. The qualitative study of provider and patient experience of oxygen scarcity here was published in the Journal of Global Surgery in December 2025, co-authored by Global Surgery University faculty.
The Gambia
Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital
Banjul, The Gambia. Site of the Johns Hopkins StAAR-funded assessment of increased oxygen access led by Dr. Imaobong Chinedozi. Critical care and perioperative provider training with a teaching-hospital cohort that can carry curricula forward to regional facilities.
United States
Columbia and Laurel, Maryland
Home base. Curriculum development, faculty coordination, simulation preparation, and the clinical work that funds the program. Scholars on remote tracks are supervised from here.
West African campus
Nigeria
Global Surgery University is registered in Nigeria as a nonprofit organization, the legal anchor for the full five-year program and for a permanent West African campus. Nigeria is the largest surgical workforce gap on the continent by population served, and the first country where the program will seek national credentialing for its graduates. Hospital partnerships will be announced as agreements are finalized.
Global Surgery Academic Scholar Program
Do real work on a real problem, with people who publish.
The Global Surgery Academic Scholar (GSAS) Program places students, postdoctoral fellows, residents, and early-career professionals on active projects across the United States and West Africa. Scholars are not observers. They own a defined piece of a study, a quality-improvement cycle, a training curriculum, or a health-systems analysis, and they are expected to bring it to a deliverable: an abstract, a manuscript, a course that was taught, a dataset that was cleaned and analyzed. Every scholar works inside AMDana from the first day, with the same project boards, IRB records, literature tools, and manuscript workflow as the faculty.
Work conducted through the JHU-GAPP partnership carries the institutional affiliation of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. Selected scholars receive a stipend, decided on project scope, time commitment, and available funding. Scholars on training and infrastructure tracks may travel to partner sites in Liberia and The Gambia. Scholars who complete their commitments in good standing receive letters of recommendation from program leadership.
Five scholar tracks · tap to explore
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Support the work
Fund a surgeon for the district that has none.
Philanthropic support for Global Surgery University flows through Healing Vessels International and is tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Gifts fund trainee bursaries across the five years, faculty time at partner hospitals, simulation and theatre equipment, and scholar stipends, and every dollar is tracked in AMDana from obligation to closeout, so a funder can see the cohort roster and the ledger that paid for it. The Mozambique evidence suggests each graduate stays and operates for years in a hospital that would otherwise have no one to do it. If you are a clinician or educator who wants to teach, a hospital that wants a partner, or a funder who wants to see the cohort roster, we would like to talk.
What a gift does
Give by bank transfer
- Payee
- Healing Vessels International / Global Surgery University, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
- Bank
- Bank of America, N.A.
- Account number
- Available upon request
Request account and routing details by phone at (855) 672-4631 or by email at admin@globalsurgery.university. Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law; a receipt is issued for every gift, and every dollar is tracked in AMDana from obligation to closeout.