Many health care professionals within their own nations are sacrificing personal comfort to care for their neglected neighbors. The award recipients are role models in providing health care for their own people.
The 2022 INMED National Healthcare Service Award recipient is Barry Bacon. After completing medical school and family medicine training, Dr. Bacon worked at a mission hospital in Malawi, southern Africa, and was medical director for 16 remote site clinics for 3 years. Upon returning to the US, he practiced and taught full-spectrum family medicine in rural northeast Washington. Dr. Bacon has continued to stay connected to global health, particularly through teaching physicians in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi. His work also includes creating a peace initiative between two warring tribes in northern Kenya and working with the lost boys of South Sudan to create a medical school to transform health outcomes in that region of the world.
In the United States, he especially loves working on health disparities in his local community in Washington state, especially on behalf of those afflicted by addiction, mental health, poverty, and homelessness. Most remarkable of these initiatives is Dr. Bacon’s work to establish Hope Street Project to alleviate homelessness in Colville, WA, and creating a business to employ homeless men to take uninhabited buildings and create beautiful living spaces.