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In 2010 Planet Care/GHAP joined forces with Foundation for the People of Burma! We're now Community Partners International. Our work continues to focus on strengthening the well-being of communities in crisis in and around Burma, through training and technical support for local community partners providing health, public health and education services, capacity building, and resource enhancement.

Planet Care History

In 1989, with the help of a map sketched on a napkin, Ben Brown found Dr. Cynthia Maung's refugee clinic in Mae Sot, on the Thai-Burma border. He helped Dr. Cynthia, who herself had recently fled Burma, treat sick villagers in a small wooden building with dirt floors, and accompanied a small cadre of refugee medics on mobile missions into border villages cut off from access to medical care by the war. When he returned to the United States, he founded Planet Care. With the help of Bob Condon, now Co-Chairman of Planet Care/Global Health Access Program, Planet Care was able to raise enough funds to pay for a lab in an old two story barn that still stands at the entrance to Dr. Cynthia's Mae Tao Clinic.

GHAP History

In 1998, Tom Lee accompanied Planet Care founder Ben Brown on a trip to the Thai-Burma border. Impressed by the work of Planet Care to support Burmese people living in Thailand, Tom looked across the border to the needs of the internally displaced communities living without healthcare inside Burma. Soon, after, he founded Global Health Access Program (GHAP) along with Anusha Dahanayake, Heather Kuiper and Loren Rauch to fill in the health care, program, and policy gaps that contribute to Burma's health crisis.

Planet Care/GHAP Merger

After many of years of working side by side, in 2006 Planet Care and Global Health Access Program decided to merge organizations, melding GHAP's health expertise and Planet Care's fundraising and management prowess into one organization supporting the displaced people of Burma.