Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.

Direct Relief focuses on four key program areas to achieve its mission:

1. Improving Maternal & Child Health: Life-saving and restorative programs to ensure the health of women and children during pregnancy and delivery;

2. Preventing and Treating Disease: Supporting health professionals in U.S. and international communities combat high-burden diseases that affect the health and well-being of the people they serve;

3. Strengthening Health Systems: Expanding access to care for underserved people in high-need areas; and

4. Preparing for and Responding to Emergencies: Providing targeted and efficient responses to international and U.S. disaster situations.

Direct Relief's programs involve a broad range of functions, several of which require specialized expertise and licensing. Among these functions are identifying key local providers of health services; working to identify the unmet needs of people; mobilizing essential medicines, supplies, and equipment that are requested and appropriate for the circumstances; and managing the logistics associated with storing, transporting, and distributing such goods to the partner organizations in the most efficient manner possible.

Strategies include:

• Utilizing expertise in pharmaceutical and supply distribution to provide medicines, medical supplies, and equipment to medical facilities where they are needed and specifically requested. Direct Relief distributes medical materials donated by more than 150 healthcare companies to healthcare providers in more than 70 countries.

• Increase the capacity of healthcare providers by equipping them with medical materials.

• Increasing access to essential maternal and newborn care by providing medications, supplies, and equipment to healthcare providers.

• Strengthening safe delivery practices by equipping trained midwives, providing them with the tools needed for clean and safe deliveries.

• Providing healthcare facilities with the materials and infrastructure needed to provide emergency obstetric care.

• Supporting the prevention and treatment of obstetric fistula through community education, healthcare provider training, and equipping healthcare facilities with the materials and infrastructure needed to perform obstetric fistula repair surgery.

• Operating the largest program in the world that distributes HIV rapid test kits to pregnant women and their families to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV.

• Managing the largest program of its kind in the world, which delivers medical products to treat opportunistic infections in people living with HIV/AIDS.

• Providing no-cost medical materials to prevent and treat disease.

• Expanding resources to over 1,100 community clinics and health centers in all 50 U.S. states that care for low-income and medically underserved individuals.

• Providing targeted and appropriate assistance and response to large-scale international emergencies in an efficient and timely manner.

• Operating the largest hurricane preparedness program to preposition medicines and supplies at health facilities located in at-risk areas.

Direct Relief employs cross-sector partnerships that bring together disparate areas of expertise from the nonprofit and corporate sectors to help vulnerable people during complex emergencies and on an ongoing basis. Direct Relief partners with corporations and adapts the insight, approaches, and tools developed for commercial activity for humanitarian purposes. This innovative approach to humanitarianism has enabled Direct Relief to understand better and address complicated issues, effectively allocate resources, and optimize aid distribution.

In-Kind Resources:

To fulfill its mission and program objectives, Direct Relief develops partnerships with businesses and organizations with particular expertise which ensures Direct Relief can effectively leverage every dollar raised to the greatest extent. This strategic pursuit of in-kind resources – both goods and services – enables Direct Relief to provide far more humanitarian assistance than would be possible in a model that relied entirely upon raising cash and then converting the money into goods and services. The organization, and, more importantly, the people it serves, benefit from the lowest-cost, most efficient use of resources.

Use of Technology:

Direct Relief utilizes SAP, a commercial-grade information technology (IT) platform, to create a flow of information through which medicines and medical supplies can be efficiently and effectively allocated. This enterprise management system tracks each medical item distributed with exceptional precision – from corporate supplier to healthcare facility recipient. This streamlines the medical product donation and distribution process, reducing paperwork and administrative costs for all participating organizations, and has also enabled Direct Relief to scale up operations to deliver more humanitarian aid around the world

Direct Relief utilizes additional technology tools to provide supporters with a high level of transparency, allowing all contributors to view where medical resources have been delivered throughout the world through detailed reporting and mapping. Direct Relief's product distribution data and maps are available on the website: https://www.directrelief.org/maps

Specific to health, recent history has shown a massive improvement of public health systems, medical discoveries, and health delivery systems. However, there is a divergence of people who can benefit from these improvements, and people living in poverty or crisis cannot.

Historically, people living in rural, remote, or poor areas of the world are often unable to obtain necessary care, and lack means to access medications and medical supplies. This disparity of access to health services has dire consequences to those most vulnerable – people get sick more often, they stay sicker for longer periods of time, and they die sooner. On a humanitarian level, the answer is to make sure that people gain access to medical resources and locally-run health systems can provide care to those who need it the most.

People are also pushed into crisis by external events – earthquakes, tsunamis, disease outbreaks, and other disasters. These conditions cause needless loss of life and place people in uncertain circumstances. Those individuals who were vulnerable before an emergency are thrown into deeper crisis, face further barriers and need additional assistance.

While much remains to accomplish, Direct Relief is working to bridge the gap of access to medications for the world's most vulnerable people and communities, enabling them to receive the care they deserve to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.

Direct Relief will continue working to improve the health and lives of people by increasing access to medicines, medical supplies, information, and other resources for locally-run health care facilities caring for vulnerable populations.