“I am constantly in awe of our volunteers,” she says. “They are incredibly dedicated.”

   Global Links started around a kitchen table, as finance officer Don Tinker puts it. Kathleen and the nonprofit’s other two founders were talking about the amount of medical surplus that gets thrown away from hospitals and figured someone should work out a way to utilize it. All three women already worked for a supply aid organization.

   Since then, the organization has grown to work with 58 hospitals and related facilities, many of them local. Donations range from supplies like gloves, catheters, sutures, and syringes, to office furniture, wheelchairs, and blood pressure monitors. Hospital staff put supplies in donation bags placed in hospitals, and the bags in turn are taken to Global Links. There, volunteers sort through the bags, boxing appropriate supplies and discarding opened or expired ones and any medications. Short-dated materials are put aside and sent with individuals traveling to do medical volunteer work.

   A combination of ever-improving technologies, changing guidelines and laws, liability concerns, and economics all play a part in Global Links’ existence. Kathleen says there are many reasons why they get what they do. She explains that when a hospital changes vendors, it often has to remove inventory not supplied by the new vendor, even if those supplies are still good. Inventory analyst and distribution manager Kristi Dellinger points out that supplies set up for surgery must be discarded if the scheduled surgery doesn’t take place. Recently, an announcement by Medicare that it would no longer pay for hospital-acquired bedsores resulted in Global Links acquiring an influx of mattresses, says Kathleen. 

   “We’re always paying attention to what is happening in the medical field and how it might impact our work,” she says.

   In contrast, clinics and hospitals in countries where Global Links sends aid are often forced to reuse gloves, and mattresses are sometimes little more than pieces of foam. Kathleen says she’s visited those countries, and seen disposable gloves washed and hanging out dry, and hospitals burning their old mattresses after receiving new ones from her organization. She once noticed a group of nurses at a hospital in Bolivia cutting down compromised latex gloves to use as wound drains.

   “Nothing is wasted,” she says.  

   In order to best place supplies, Kathleen says they meet with national health authorities, and focus their efforts on nine countries in the Caribbean and in South and Central America. She says doing so allows them to understand the particular needs of the country, and to be more culturally aware. The organization also meets with health ministers and hospital personnel. 

   “We provide more than material aid,” she says. “Our work is more involved and collaborative at many different levels.”

   Kathleen says they prefer to work on projects within a public health framework, like updating and improving an area’s health posts. They also focus on primary care, which, according to the World Health Organization, is the most effective means of preventing more serious health problems.

   Recently, Global Links took on a project collaborating with the government of Haiti to help improve the mobility of people with disabilities. The organization is sending shipments of canes, crutches, wheelchairs, and walkers, prepared and refurbished by volunteers. Global Links has worked in Haiti for many years, increasingly so after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The organization has also long provided aid to Santiago, Cuba, increasingly so after Hurricane Sandy. Global Links also recently worked to upgrade the emergency room at a Nicaraguan hospital along a major thoroughfare where car accidents are common.

   Through its work, Global Links has also benefitted the environment. Its efforts to cut down on land filling nondegradable materials has been recognized by Practice Greenhealth, an environmental organization comprised of health professionals. 

   “This is 100% gain,” says Kathleen. “Otherwise, all of these materials would be going into a landfill.”