Global Health Organizations Play a Growing Role in the Puget Sound Region

Outstanding Global Health Organization

Finalists (in alphabetic order)

Christopher Elias, President and CEO, PATH

PATH, under the direction of Christopher Elias, has harnessed modern science and engineering to develop culturally appropriate and sustainable solutions for health problems in the developing world. PATH has advanced many innovations, about 85 different technologies, in its 30 years working for global health, including an affordable vaccine that will fight a meningitis strain that has devastated millions of people in Africa and a sticker for vaccine vials that indicates when they may have been spoiled by heat.

Monty Montoya
President and CEO, SightLife

A global leader and partner in the effort to eliminate corneal blindness, SightLife is a nonprofit corneal transplant recovery and distribution organization. A recipient of the Washington Evergreen Award, SightLife creates turnkey eye bank systems, providing important access to donated corneas in many areas of the world. Organizer of the first international eye bank development meeting in Seattle, in 2009, with 26 countries in attendance, SightLife is affiliated with the UW School of Medicines Department of Ophthalmology and other academic institutions around the world.

Ken Stuart, President and director,

Seattle Biomedical Research Institute

Back in 1976, when research on infectious disease in the United States was rare and few used the term global health, Ken Stuart brought together the best and brightest to find cures for international killers. The first in South Lake Unions global health hub, Seattle BioMed researchers recently began human clinical trials for a malaria vaccine and discovered a trigger for latent tuberculosis. Meanwhile, the institutes training programsincluding BioQuest for high schoolersreadies the next generation of global health scientists.