Zac D. Wall
Hi there, I’m Zac, co-founder and President of International Health Effort. I am currently an Engineer Lieutenant in the US Army, and I served for a few years as a Congressional Staffer in Washington, DC. I graduated from West Coast Baptist College in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree and finished my master’s degree at the same institution in 2014. After devoting my studies to world outreach and global missions, I began searching for opportunities to make a difference internationally. I traveled to South India to donate freelance videography services to a charity operating in remote villages near Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. For the entire month I spent in India, I visited village after village of people who suffered from a lack of healthy drinking water, medical aid, prescription medicines, basic education, and many other essentials to their well-being. The conditions of most of these villages were destitute and lacking any form of sanitation practices. Frankly, people were dying from preventable illnesses.
One particular village where I snapped the picture below, I met these two children. The only well in their village had recently dried up and the nearest freshwater well was a few kilometers away. They also had inadequate education, zero organic medical services, and no economic inclusion. Unfortunately, this story is all too familiar around the world, as over 900 million people continue to live in extreme poverty. After the India trip, I began working with Jeff to found a charity to address this need. He had also taken several trips to various countries in Africa to address the medical needs of some of the poorest people on earth. As a result, we were united in our vision and International Health Effort was born. The need is great and seems daunting at times; but if we work together, we can radically impact future generations who could otherwise live in these conditions for the rest of their lives. Will you join us?
Jeffrey W. Cannon, MD
I grew up in the mountains of West Virginia. In the hills, I learned to value community, family, and health. When I finished high school, I decided to move away from the hills. But when I moved away to the Mojave Desert near Los Angeles for my first year of undergraduate school in ministerial training, I realized that West Virginia had left an indelible mark on my life. After one year at West Coast Baptist College, I transferred to Pensacola Christian College in Florida where I majored in natural sciences and minored in English and Theology and graduated with the highest honor the college gives to a graduating senior, the President’s Citation of Merit. I earned my MD degree at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, and I plan to have a career in anesthesiology with a focus on global health.
I took my first global health trip in my freshman year of college. I went to Kenya and saw first hand the stark contrast between the towering skyscrapers and one of the largest slums in the world nearby. We provided free medical care to a community that otherwise had no means to access healthcare. But more importantly, we connected them with local charities and nonprofits that were able to continue to help far after we had left the scene. I was inspired by this line of work. The summer between my junior and senior year of college, I interned at Medical Missions Outreach outside Baltimore, MD. There I learned the planning and logistics that go into doing global humanitarian work. As a part of that internship, I went to Côte d’Ivoire on another medical trip which again connected underprivileged people to their community resources. During medical school, I spent two weeks back in Côte d’Ivoire with Dr. Bernard Kadio, learning the ins and outs of how public health intersects with many other human needs. He invested in me and asked me to partner with him in humanitarian endeavors.
My time in medical school is finished, and I am starting another four years of advanced training in an anesthesiology residency. This training will open more doors for International Health Effort. Zac and I have a vision and focus to make International Health Effort a vehicle to improve the health of communities around the world. We seek to partner with other humans who have a desire to help their fellow humans. We are seeking to apply what we have learned to novel situations in order to advance health in the communities we will partner with. You can be a part of this as well. Please email us if you have any questions. Thank you for being part of this Effort!
