Chief Consultant, STEP Global, LLC.
Hikari Morikawa, MA, MSSA
Chief Consultant, STEP Global, LLC.
It was 1985 when I got involved in global health as a volunteer newsletter editor of an NGO. I was very moved by the stories of Cambodian refugees. I wanted to be able to work for people whose right to live to the fullest has been at risk. To serve better, I obtained my master’s in social work and have been working as a consultant in community development and global health since 1990s. My specific areas of concentration are counseling, facilitation, leadership, communication skills & health education. The following are the examples of the projects I have worked on:
- Helped develop a counselor training program and organize the first counselor network in the Department of Olancho, Honduras.
- Trained officials of the Ministries of Health and Education, health care providers and teachers for school health, and developed activity-based school health programs, the first in its kind, in Fayoum, Egypt.
- Developed and implemented an empowerment program for Mayan women in the Department of Solola, Guatemala.
- Helped develop training on communication and problem-solving skills for medical residents in Chiang Rai, Thailand.
Project Manager, STEP Global, LLC.
Mori J. Morikawa, MD, MPH
Project Manager, STEP Global, LLC.
Ann S. & Anthony J. Asher Professor in Family Medicine & Community Health
School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University
Director, Inpatient Service and Global Health Track
Department of Family Medicine & Community Health
University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center
I’ve been practicing global health since 1984 when I first went to a Cambodian refugee camp. I was trained as a trauma surgeon in Japan before I received my MPH at the School of Public Health and Hygiene, Johns Hopkins University. Then I realized I needed primary care skills to serve as a competent global health practitioner. I chose family medicine for my retraining and came to Cleveland and have lived here ever since. Over the years, my focus in global health has shifted from trauma surgery/emergency relief to primary care/capacity building in communities. Since 2000, I have also been the Director of the Inpatient Service at the Department of Family Medicine. Bedside clinical instruction is my passion, and currently I focus on teaching POC ultrasound at the bedside. The examples of my global health activities are:
- Supervised the delivery of primary care in 3 northern provinces in Afghanistan.
- Provided bedside teaching in tertiary care hospitals in Hangzhou, China.
- Implemented emergency primary care clinic and trained local health care providers in Vushtrri, Kosova.
- Trained health care providers in a district hospital for basic war surgery in Xieng Khouang Laos.
- Provided primary surgery and medical care to disarmed Maoist child soldiers in Surkhet district, Nepal.
- Helped the Master’s Program in Family Medicine as an external examiner for Alzaiem Azahri University, Khartoum, Sudan.
- Helped develop family medicine residency program in the Chiang Rai Provincial Hospital, Thailand.