Our mission is to provide free medical/healthcare information — with a primary focus on children’s musculoskeletalhealth — for anyone, anywhere, anytime. We aim to create, distribute, and compile information that is free, is relevant worldwide, prioritizes affordable and effective healthcare solutions, and is non-commercial. Our long-term goal is to create sustainable improvement in healthcare by helping people help themselves.
Disclaimer: These publications are for informational purposes only and are not appropriate or complete replacements for professional medical diagnosis. Global HELP and the original publishers assume no liability for actions performed as a result of these titles.
What is the story of Global HELP?
Global HELP was the brainchild of Drs. Lynn and Lana Staheli. After the tragedy of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 with Dr. Lynn Staheli recently retired from clinical practice as a pediatric orthopaeidc surgeon, the Drs. Staheli came to the conclusion that the best way to deal with conflict in the world was to address the underlying causes of inequity and injustice. While recognizing that the origins of terrorism are complex and multiple, the Stahelis believed the fundamental causes included poverty, despair, and poor healthcare. Thus, improving health would lead to a more peaceful world, they concluded, and improving health requires access to healthcare information…It was this reasoning from which Global HELP was born.
Given their backgrounds in medicine, academia, and publishing, providing access to health-education resources seemed a logical and powerful way to give something back. This spawned the idea for Global HELP (Health Education using Low-cost Publications): the creation, distribution and broad access to affordable health education materials.
While teaching in numerous countries, the Stahelis witnessed first-hand the need for information sharing in the medical world. Traditional sources of healthcare information in journals and medical books that are traditionally produced in the United States and Europe were unaffordable and sometimes unsuitable in other areas of the world. They saw whole hospitals whose entire medical libraries did not fill a single bookshelf.
How could this healthcare information gap be closed in other countries at an affordable cost or for free? Based on the Stahelis’ personal experience in creating computer-generated textbooks, digital publications looked like an excellent solution. Digital publications are generally created at low cost and can be distributed without charge on the web or at a nominal cost in print or on compact discs.
In 2002, the Stahelis put the vision into action and created Global HELP, a not-for-profit organization. Together with Board Chair Paul Merriman and many other dedicated staff and volunteers over the next 19 years, they expanded Global HELP’s collection of free and low-cost publications — focused primarily on the website for PDF downloads and medical educational videos via YouTube — finding different ways to distribute medical information to new countries and new people every day.
Dr. Lynn Staheli passed away on August 9, 2021. His greatest desire as he neared the end of his life was to see Global HELP live on. He and Lana secured the continuation of Global HELP by its transition to the pediatric orthopaedic team at the University of California San Francisco, in collaboration with numerous surgeons across the globe. Under the direction of Dr. Coleen Sabatini, a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon at UCSF and fellow humanitarian, Global HELP continues to be a free, accessible resource for those providing pediatric musculoskeletal care throughout the world.
For more information, check out our FAQ and Our Mission.
