Global Health Ministries

Global Health Ministries (GHM) focuses on strengthening health systems through access to medical equipment and supplies, support for community-based primary health care programs, and expert administrative and leadership consulting.

We’ve partnered for decades in resource-poor settings and these deep relationships are one of our core competencies. We journey together with our brothers and sisters in Christ, where Lutheran churches manage hospitals, clinics, and grassroots efforts – all focused on improving the health of even the most vulnerable.

GHM focuses on strengthening health systems through three integrated strategies: Leadership, Medical Supplies, and Grassroots Efforts.

Our History

Global Health Ministries’ (GHM’s) roots run deep in the red dirt of Madagascar, in Liberia, Tanzania, and Cameroon. These places were home, at least for a time, for many of GHM’s founders and early supporters.

The origins of GHM are rooted in Lutheran missionaries who lived and worked and often raised their families in these countries. Many were medical missionaries, serving alongside local colleagues as doctors and nurses at mission hospitals they helped build. Eventually, many of the missionaries returned to the U.S. to practice medicine in Minnesota, California, Wisconsin, Montana. But the people and places they had come to love stayed in their hearts.

What We Do

Leadership is fundamental to effective and sustainable health systems. From community efforts to the administration of large-scale hospital systems, GHM partners to equip leaders. Through scholarships and investments in appropriate training institutions, GHM partners to raise up new talent for local health promotion and healthcare systems. As existing leaders seek to grow, GHM also organizes expert teams of consultants, through GHAP (the consulting arm of GHM, called Global Health Administration Partners), to come alongside these leaders with the experience and insight they seek.

Strategic donations of medical supplies and equipment are both sustaining and capacity-building. In resource-poor settings many patients can’t pay, and healthcare systems are often crippled by a lack of equipment and supplies. GHM’s supply chain is a lifeline for mission hospitals and clinics that struggle to provide healthcare to some of the world’s most vulnerable people. Donated overstock and unused medical supplies from the USA literally empower medical staff to save lives. Donated equipment, like an x-ray or anesthesia machine, increases the services a health center can provide. It may also make that center eligible for ongoing support from the local government health department.

Mobilizing grassroots efforts to improve community health is even more effective than “healthcare.” That’s why we talk about “health systems” (not just healthcare, but integrated systems that promote healthy choices at the community level). GHM seeks to help our partners discover ways to train community health workers (CHWs) and mobilize community-based efforts that improve health. Wide evidence-based research demonstrates that a community-based approach is the most effective way for whole communities to adopt habits that promote health and even prevent common deadly illnesses.

We work in 13 counties: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Liberia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, India, El Salvador, Nicaragua.

Our History

What We Do

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