David Werner

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David Werner is co-founder and Director of HealthWrights (based in Palo Alto, California) and a Visiting Professor at Boston University International School of Public Health. A biologist and educator by training, he has worked for the past 37 years in village health care, community-based rehabilitation, and Child-to-Child health initiatives in the Third World, especially Mexico.

For several decades Werner served as facilitator and advisor to Project Piaxtla, a pioneering villager-run program which contributed to the early conceptualization and evolution of Primary Health Care. Out of Piaxtla grew PROJIMO, an innovative Community Based Rehabilitation Program Organized and run Disabled Youth of Western Mexico. In 1975 Werner co-founded the Hesperian Foundation, which publishes Where There Is No Doctor and many other books on community-based healthcare. He left that organization in 1993.

Werner has authored and illustrated several handbooks on topics including basic healthcare, innovative solutions with limited resources, and assistive technology. In 1998, he co-authored the book, Questioning the Solution: the Politics of Primary Health Care and Child Survival, which explores the root causes of poor health and possibilities for a healthier, more equitable way forward.

Werner has worked in more than 50 countries, mostly developing countries, helping to facilitate workshops, training programs, and approaches to "health education for change." He has been a consultant for UNICEF, WHO, the Peace Corps, UNDP, and UN-ESCAP and various state and federal governments ranging from Mexico to India and Iran. He has received awards and/or fellowships from the World Health Organization, the American Pediatric Association, the American Medical Writers Association, Guggenheim, and the MacArthur Foundation, among others. Werner is a founding member of the International People's Health Council. Werner has also been active in the Planning and Analytic Group for the People's Health Movement, which was launched at the People's Health Assembly, Bangladesh, 2000.

Werner is co-author of the book Where There is No Doctor and Nothing about us without us, Developing Innovative Technologies For, By and With Disabled Persons.