Profiles
Kevin Fiori, Jr. : Hope Through Health
Fiori, Jr. audio on why he went into medicine (1:49)
As an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego, Kevin Fiori,, Jr., knew he would eventually volunteer in the Peace Corps. He wanted to find a way to fuse his interest in science with fieldwork and patient interaction.
After receiving bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and human development, Fiori, Jr. was nominated by a professor to participate in a program where he spent a month in New Zealand and Australia studying health care. He then enrolled in the master’s in public health program at Boston University where he chose to incorporate Peace Corps to fulfill capstone requirements.
In September 2003, Fiori, Jr. started his Peace Corps service in Togo, West Africa. He worked with Association Espor pour Demain-Lidaw (AED-Lidaw), an association of people living with HIV/AIDS, which at the time had no funding and limited resources. With only a building, AED-Lidaw members were able to foster a supportive and compassionate environment for patients living with HIV/AIDS in Togo. Inspired by AED-Lidaw’s mission, Fiori, Jr. collaborated with AED-Lidaw members and started up a nonprofit organization to help fund, oversee, and expand AED-Lidaw’s operations. In 2004, with his brother and two aunts, Fiori, Jr. founded Hope Through Health (HTH), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing HIV/AIDS medical and psychosocial care centered on patient perspectives and needs.
The collaboration between AED-Lidaw and Hope Through Health, referred to as the Community Direct HIV Initiative, started simply by listening to patients talk about their needs. This eventually led to a list of “10 needs” from which Hope Through Health bases its model of care. The model involves stakeholders and patients in directing and supervising programs that include medications for opportunistic infections, antiretroviral therapy, immediate access to medical consultations, and nutritional support.
With technical advice from Lisa Hirschhorn, professor at Harvard Medical School, and Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, Fiori, Jr. spent the next two-and-a-half years creating and revising a model of care for Hope for Health. With the advent and availability of treatment, more people got tested for HIV and sought help at the clinic.
In the five years since it started, Hope Through Health has grown from serving 100 patients to serving 1,500 patients. HTH manages four clinic sites and 90 Togolese staff members as well as 60 volunteers all over the United States.
Fiori, Jr. is now a first-year medical student at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine and in the Department of Global Health's, Global Health Pathway. He spends much of his free time serving as HTH’s associate director. His fiancé, Jennifer Schehcter, who he met during Peace Corps, is currently the executive director of HTH.
Written January 2009
