Design 21: Social Design Network

Dan Kelly is Founder and Executive Director of the Global Action Foundation (GAF).

Prior to starting medical school, Dan studied chemistry and Spanish language and culture at Princeton University. In his spare time Dan rowed for the lightweight crew team, served as an outdoor action leader trainer and held the position of residential advisor at Butler College.

Dan’s passion for reducing global poverty started at Princeton while working as a Spanish translator and Volunteer Coordinator of Translation Services for its charity-care clinic, which assists the local Guatemalan population at Princeton Medical Center. Mr. Kelly is now a fourth-year medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York.

Post graduation, Dan brokered a partnership between Princeton University and Child Family Health International to organize a summer experience with annual funding for five juniors. In his first year of medical school, Dan served as Project Director for the ECHO free clinic, the first student-run free clinic for the uninsured in New York City, and managed an administrative board of eighteen medical students. In 2006, he co-initiated an umbrella group, Students for Health and Social Justice, for all Einstein organizations with health outreach programs.

Dan serves as the Primary Investigator for Project Poverty Awareness, a research and advocacy initiative conducted in Bronx high schools and university populations. This project has been incorporated into the Family Medicine Clerkship at Einstein for medical student participation.

Derived from the Latin roots inops- (those in need) and –ology (the study of), Dan coined the term Inoptology meaning “the study of poverty.” In 2006 Dan founded a community-based web portal, PovertyHealth.org, as an information resource for global youth populations. During his third year of medical school, Albert Einstein awarded Dan a Global Health Fellowship for the academic year 2006-2007.

While in Sierra Leone, Dan worked with both governmental and non-governmental health systems to establish the indigenous non-governmental organization (nNGO) the National Organization for Welbody (NOW). He is also Executive Director of NOW, GAF’s implementing partner, working on the ground in Sierra Leone.

Dan also spent part of his Global Health Fellowship year working in Lesotho with a Canadian non-governmental organization, Help Lesotho, and in a remote mission hospital.

Dan enjoys running marathons, writing poetry and books relating to anthropology, economics and poverty reduction.

For more details, please visit our website at www.go-act.org Global Action Foundation~ PO Box 55~ Valley Forge, PA 610-933-5261