ABSTRACT
Based on a career of consultancies around the world, Frank Baer sketches a primary health-care paradigm for a sequential series of steps from crisis intervention to sustainable collaboration of local, regional, national, and international partners in public health and institutional development. This paradigm is the enactment of the World Health Organization’s 1978 Alma Ata Declaration of “Health for All…” A term with Mennonite Central Committee in a pilot public health zone initiative led to a leadership role in the unique Zaire/Congo public-private collaborative framework that established the national network of health zones across the state-failed, war-torn country. A central feature of this process was the creation of Santé Rurale (SANRU), an independent national NGO, that continues to channel funds, medicines, and research to health zones nationwide. Baer describes his growing up years in a joint Swiss Mennonite-Scottish/English Methodist environment in Hagerstown, Maryland., where the local Mennonite church and psychiatric center and MCC exchange students led him to embrace a broadminded and service orientation to life. Goshen College provided opportunity for advancement in science; it is also where he met his future wife Retha Yoder. Together they joined MCC’s Teachers Abroad Program (TAP) in Zaire.
