Babson Establishes Kerry Murphy Healey Center For Global Healthcare Entrepreneurship With Gift From Kletjian Foundation;

WELLESLEY, Mass., Sept. 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Kerry Murphy Healey Center for Global Healthcare Entrepreneurship has been established at Babson College, funded by $10 million in total lifetime gifts from the Steven C. and Carmella R. Kletjian Foundation in order to further the College's efforts to bring entrepreneurial solutions to pressing global healthcare challenges.

The Center intends to establish a global "community of interest" in order to develop innovations in healthcare systems and processes that, in turn, spur advances in global health and surgery. Babson will support a cadre of faculty, staff and students who will participate in our "community of interest" and engage in teaching, research, and outreach related to these innovations.

This generous gift follows earlier support to the College, establishing a new, endowed distinguished professorship, the Steven C. and Carmella R. Kletjian Foundation Distinguished Professor in Global Surgery, and the Leonard A. Schlesinger Fund for Global Healthcare Entrepreneurship, named in honor of Babson's 12th President.  The Schlesinger Fund is housed within the Lewis Institute for Social Innovation at Babson, and has been led by Cheryl Yaffe Kiser, Executive Director of The Lewis Institute for Social Innovation and The Babson Social Innovation Lab, and Babson Associate Professor of Technology, Operations and Information Management Wiljeana Glover.

Babson efforts in this area explore the state of global surgery and health through the lens of entrepreneurship and business organization principles. These efforts further highlight the necessity of unconventional global health solutions and showcase the potential world-changing results of applying Babson's methodology of Entrepreneurial Thought and Action® in this space.

The Kletjian Foundation also has endowed chairs and supported programs at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary to ensure there is a collaborative network working together to solve these complex issues.

"My hope is that the new center will succeed in bringing two disciplines together, medicine and entrepreneurship, and teach present and future generations the skills that will help improve the delivery of medicine in challenging areas," says Carmella Kletjian, who is the co-founder of the Steven C. and Carmella R. Kletjian Foundation, which strives to improve the safety, affordability, and quality of surgery in the world's poorest places.

"The power of Babson is its ability to create business ecosystems around global health problems," says Dr. Mack Cheney, co-founder of the Kletjian Foundation, who has spent 30 years delivering care in developing countries such as Guatemala, Haiti, Ecuador, and Kenya. "Currently, the lack of those systems is negatively impacting 80 percent of the world's population."

"Global health is an area primed for disruption and ready to benefit from the ideas, impact and value that entrepreneurial leaders create," said Babson College President Stephen Spinelli, Jr., PhD. "By applying Babson's proven entrepreneurial approach to global health challenges, we can make great strides in ensuring that all people have access to safe, sustainable, and high-quality medical care."

Among Babson's past efforts in the healthcare arena was the Global Healthcare Entrepreneurship Summit, which brought together experts from around the world to present and discuss several in a series of  teaching cases developed by Babson for the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, showcasing remarkable achievements made by global innovators as well as continuing challenges in the equitable delivery of surgical care to the world's poor.

Global Health Needs Entrepreneurship

The majority of today's global health challenges are managerial, not medical.  Due to significant advances in modern medicine during the 20th century, the question for those working in global health has shifted from, "how do we treat this disease?" to "how do we improve access to quality healthcare?"  The barriers to delivering quality care are countless, and they require us to think beyond disease-specific solutions and confront issues surrounding health systems overall. Entrepreneurial Thought and Action® (ETA) has the ability to help global health professionals re-envision the global health agenda and think strategically about the paths that lead to poverty alleviation.

Kletjian Foundation

The Kletjian Foundation builds collaborative networks and supports entrepreneurial leaders that promote global health equity. We envision a world in which all people have access to safe, sustainable, and high-quality medical care. Strategic partnerships with leading Boston-based hospitals, global surgery groups, medical schools, and business programs enhance our mission and improve efficiency and effectiveness of global surgery initiatives.  The Kletjian Foundation invests in energetic, dedicated, and high-achieving entrepreneurs.  Whether they're globally-minded academics, clinicians, students, or business leaders, the Foundation empowers them to excel. The Kletjian Foundation acknowledges the importance of quality education for the future leaders in global health. The Foundation invests in institutions, research, and individuals who advance global health education.

About Babson College

Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader of Entrepreneurship of All Kinds^®. The top-ranked college for entrepreneurship education, Babson is a dynamic living and learning laboratory where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society. We prepare the entrepreneurial leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, and motivate teams in a common purpose to make a difference in the world, and have an impact on organizations of all sizes and types. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought & Action^® as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value.

SOURCE Babson College