SLEEPY HOLLOW RESIDENT WORKS TO ADDRESS GLOBAL HEALTH INEQUITY

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Dr. Grose with Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah

April 24, 2025

By Maria Ann Roglieri–

At a time when the U.S. government is turning inward and pulling funding for critical health care projects around the world, it is encouraging to learn that there are remarkable American physicians and administrators who are still trying to help.

Sleepy Hollow resident Dr. Andrew Grose is an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in the local tri-state area who has been working for four years to address one of the most pressing, yet somewhat overlooked, global health threats: traumatic injury. According to the Global Surgery Foundation, traumatic injuries cause more deaths and disabilities than HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. And yet, the devastating reality is that 5 billion people worldwide lack access to well-trained surgeons and anesthesiologists.

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Dr. Grose’s efforts began four years ago when he joined the newly-formed Global Musculoskeletal Health Equity Division (GMHED) of HSS. As a domain expert in orthopedic surgery, he was asked to travel to Ghana to meet with physicians and administrators at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), a leading government-funded specialty hospital in Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana. He was tasked to observe and engage with local medical staff to identify critical gaps in care.

Through informal focus groups and semi-structured interviews, he evaluated the scope and delivery of orthopedic services at KATH and assessed the level of support given to the medical professionals providing that care. The results of his evaluation were concerning: there was a high volume of trauma cases (in this case work accidents and vehicular injuries) due to the region’s heavy industrialization combined with the lack of corresponding safety standards.

There was also a serious shortage of specialized orthopedic surgeons: only 15 orthopedists were serving as generalists without specialty training. The gap in expert care for trauma cases was glaringly evident. The physical resource gap was also evident: surgeons faced significant challenges in the operating rooms, including inadequate surgical instruments and oxygen and power shortages during surgeries. Finally, patients who got surgery at KATH suffered from these gaps, but still they were the relatively lucky ones because they actually underwent surgery.

Many patients left the emergency room against medical advice because they could not afford surgery for even simple open fractures. They either died of their injuries or suffered permanent severe disability that could never be reversed. Dr. Grose was deeply moved by the disparities in medical care between the U.S. and Ghana. He offered his services in two ways.

First, he began to perform pro bono surgeries on patients at KATH (and has continued to do so for 4 years). And second, he and the GMHED team initiated a long-term project to improve quality orthopedic care in Ghana by focusing on building sustainable capacity and providing specialized training. This entails establishing a surgical orthopedic trauma fellowship program at KATH; training nursing and OR teams; and procuring donations of implants and surgical tools in an effort to upgrade hospital facilities and equipment.

Four years have passed and Dr. Grose and his team of nine other surgeons and countless administrators from Europe and North America have traveled back and forth to Kumasi in successive 2-4 week blocks to fulfill their mission. They have dramatically changed lives and systems in Ghana. Grose has personally surgically repaired hundreds of individual trauma patients and he and his GMHED team have successfully procured donations of critical surgical equipment including large amounts of surgical implants, surgical tables, and a fluoroscopy machine (a type of medical imaging device that provides real-time, moving X-ray images of the inside of the body during surgery).

Money for this equipment has come from private donors and healthcare companies including Johnson & Johnson’s Global Health Initiative, Stryker, and Project C.U.R.E. Finally, the team will graduate the first two orthopedic trauma specialists this summer. Just this past month, Dr. Grose met with the Honorable Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh at his office in Accra. The two discussed HSS efforts to create an orthopaedic Center of Excellence at KATH offering subspecialty training in all areas of orthopedics and then to branch out throughout Ghana and West Africa to create even more Centers of Excellence.

The plan is to develop a series of musculoskeletal training programs that will serve all of West Africa. By training local surgeons to expert levels, the GMHED team will create a sustainable model that not only addresses the immediate needs but also enables the development of further fellowships in orthopedics within Ghana. The team will provide full, one-year immersive subspecialty training through partnerships. One such partnership is with the Foundation for Orthopedics and Complex Spine (FOCOS) in Accra and will provide training in joint replacements and spine surgery.

Other partnerships include: one with Harvard Medical School to provide a training program in pediatric oncology; another with Dr. Mark Barry and COEDN.org to provide training in pediatric orthopedics; and a partnership with University of Calgary to provide training in sports medicine. The training programs are designed to ultimately expand beyond Ghana and West Africa to reach surgeons in neighboring countries. This ripple effect can significantly improve orthopedic care across the entire region.

If you are inspired by these extraordinary efforts to address global health inequity, please think about donating to the GMHED team by going to www.hss.edu/give and enter GMHED as the designee for the donation. GMHED is funded by HSS, as well as by company and individual donations, and all members of the GMHED team give their time and services voluntarily and for free.

Several other local surgeons are involved in this project: David Wellman (Westchester Medical Center), Jason McKean (Northwell) and Milan Sen (Jacobi). For more information on this amazing project, go to: https://vimeo.com/1021862740/1edb265e66. Back in Sleepy Hollow at least for a bit, Grose comments, “It is a great gift to be able to help build something where it is needed. I’m lucky to have support from my family, and my organization. But there is much, much more to do.”

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