From Peace Corps to Global Health: John Kuehnle’s Journey to Helping Hospitals Worldwide

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Dr. Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. We are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. Today I have with me John Kuehnle, who is the CEO of Partners for World Health. Thanks for coming in today.

John Kuehnle: Thank you, Lisa. I'm happy to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So John, this is an interesting new chapter for you.

John Kuehnle: Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: And not one that you've been doing too terribly long. No. But you have a long background in, well, sort of parallel business and public health and understanding of trying to facilitate aid for other places.

John Kuehnle: Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So I don't even know where to start. I'm so intrigued by the fact that you're doing this work now. I guess start with your Maine connection.

John Kuehnle: We have been, my wife and I, residents of Maine since 2011 when we originally moved overseas with USAID. My mom had bought a place here in 2000. We're originally from Massachusetts, but obviously she loved it up here and moved up here as soon as she could. And we followed suit. So every Christmas, every summer, we always came back to Maine when we were overseas with USAID. So when we were coming back permanently, it was a very easy decision to come back to Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Talk to me about that decision to come back permanently. I mean, that sounds like a long career that you made overseas, and so that's a big transition back.

John Kuehnle: We were overseas for 13 years in total in South Africa, Zambia and Kenya. Both my parents have some aging health issues. So after 13 years overseas, it made sense to come back. And we looked at either coming back to Washington DC or coming back to Maine. And we chose Maine because we wanted a place that was more family friendly for our kids to grow up in. And just to have that closeness of the community and access to all things Maine, outdoors, skiing, fishing, all the things we all love.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I definitely want to circle back around to some of your background, but for people who are not familiar with Partners for World Health, talk to me about that.

John Kuehnle: Partners for World Health was founded by Elizabeth McClellan in 2009. And she saw through her travels around the world, this immense need for medical equipment and supplies. And that's something I saw in my 13 years overseas with USAID. And then I was also in Nicaragua for four years with the Peace Corps. So I've seen a lot of clinics. I've seen the need around the world. And so Elizabeth was a nurse at Maine Med and she started collecting leftover surplus supplies and keeping them, bringing them home. And that grew and grew until where we are now, where we have three warehouses in Portland, our main one in Riverton, and then two additional warehouses. So we collect from hospitals across New England. Maine Health is obviously a very big partner of ours, so is Mercy in Northern Light, but we collect from a lot of the Boston hospitals, Boston Children's, the Beth Israel system. And we have hundreds of volunteers based here in Maine who sort through all of that, repackage it. We find recipients, partners in countries around the world and send them what they ask for.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So having been in healthcare for many years and working both in hospitals and also the outpatient setting, I certainly have seen the amount of essentially clean medical discards. I don't even want to call it medical waste because it's not really waste. It's just waste dead. Surplus. Yes. It's surplus. Yes. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Because we would open a package of something and there would be another package inside and you'd use one of the something, then there are four that are left. And then it just ends up because it can't be reused within the clinic or the hospital. Exactly. It ends up being surplus and essentially discarded.

John Kuehnle: Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So what I love about what you're doing is that you're also serving to decrease what's going into the waste stream, which is incredibly Important.

John Kuehnle: So we have two mandates. One is reducing environmental waste and then using that waste, and it's not waste, it's surplus, repurposing that both in the US and overseas. We have a fairly significant program here that is less known as part of our business, but we collect and refurbish and clean a lot of durable medical equipment. So things like wheelchairs, crutches, things that have many, many years of life, but often get one use. We collect that, we clean it up, and we make it available to people here in Maine. Last year, we sold items to over 700 clients in eight counties across the state. So we always get the question, it's great what you're doing for people around the world, but we have needs here in Maine too, and we serve our local communities as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Yeah, that's such an interesting topic because having worked myself with patients who their insurance doesn't cover a set of crutches or here's a shower stool or a rollator walker thing.

John Kuehnle: Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: And it's so expensive for this person or for the family. And then especially if you're talking about somebody who doesn't use it very often for very long, that becomes a huge investment that essentially goes to waste.

John Kuehnle: And that's exactly the issue we're trying to address. And a lot of the things we collect have been sadly used for a couple of weeks, maybe a month near the end of somebody's life, and we're able to collect it, clean it up, refurbish it so it looks as good as new. And we can sell it to people in Maine for a fraction of the cost. And it's exactly what you're describing. It's people who've been discharged and they need a wheelchair, but their insurance won't cover it or it's going to take several weeks to process and we can help them out almost immediately. And yeah, it's something we're very proud of and trying to promote so that more people know about what we do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I think that one of the things that I was struck by when my father was in the final days of his life, that some of these pieces of equipment, they just enabled him to continue to live more fully to the extent that was possible, given where he was in his trajectory. And so it wasn't like, "Oh, well, here's an accessory that could be fun to use." It was more like, no, this is something the occupational therapist, the physical therapist, other people who would come in to help him would say, "This is something that could make him more comfortable." And it made a huge difference.

John Kuehnle: Absolutely. And I have a very personal, very recent example of exactly that where my father is now in hospice and he needed a commode because he couldn't get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And we were able to get him a commode that we could put next to his bed, which I mean, facilitated his quality of life immensely with something that seems very simple and not everybody thinks about, but it was literally life changing for him in that moment.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I really, I'm sorry to hear about your father. And it's something that's so interesting to me because hospice is something, and it's a little bit of a tangent, but having had some experience with it myself, it's something that is so much more common than people realize and the things that you need when someone is in hospice are much more than you would think. And It's often in people's homes.

John Kuehnle: Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So I think I'm so glad that you're willing to share that example because it's something that doesn't ... I don't think it gets talked about that much.

John Kuehnle: Yeah. I was actually able to get it to him far more quickly than the hospice folks down in Massachusetts were. So that is also something that we do for our clients here in Maine and further if they're interested.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So you're serving people here in Maine. You're also working with people in other countries. Tell me about the reach of your organization in other countries.

John Kuehnle: We sent 22 containers and other shipments to countries last year. So there were 12 countries in total. We sent multiple containers to Ukraine because of the ongoing war there. We have essentially three types of programs. One is our emergency response, which we respond to crises like the war in Ukraine, the hurricane that recently affected Jamaica. Anytime there's an earthquake and we get a request, we prioritize that and try to get something to them, not necessarily as soon as possible, but as soon as they can use it, because often there's kind of a window initially where if you send something, it's just going to sit at the border or at the port and it's not going to get into the country. So we try to get it there as soon as they can feasibly use it. We also have what I call our pillar partnerships. And these are return customers that are longer term projects where we're trying to build a health system. So for example, we have two that we're working on right now. One is a partner with the Boston Children's Hospital down in Boston and the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia, Liberia. And so this medical center was actually initially came to ... It originated with John F. Kennedy and the then president of Liberia in the 60s and it has continued and it has grown and they are in the process of setting up essentially a NICU, so a neonatal intensive care unit. And so we're working with Boston Children's and the hospital there to figure out exactly what they need. We'll source that from hospitals across New England. Some of that will be from BCH, some of it will be from other locations. And so that will be a multi-year partnership where we set several containers and make sure they have everything they need to get on their feet. And we also work with governments to make sure that they are planning for and budgeting for recurring supplies. So we can send you equipment and supplies to get you started, but we also work to make sure that our investments are sustainable and that the local authorities and local governments are continuing and planning for that sustainability. And that's something that I ... At USAID, that is exactly how we operated. And so that's one of the things that I'm bringing to the organization and trying to deepen these partnerships and make sure they're as sustainable as possible.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So this is one of the things that I find fascinating is that you have joint degrees, you have a master's in public health, but you also have an MBA from Johns Hopkins. And this, I think, is the really important place that we've come to now in healthcare is the theory is great and also we need to match up logistics. We actually need to be able to say, "Here's the need and here's how we meet it." And I have an MPH and an MBA. And for me, that just is such a nice combination.

John Kuehnle: Absolutely

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Because you're not just saying, "Oh, well, public health is important." You're saying public health is important and this is how we make it possible to address the issues.

John Kuehnle: That's exactly what it is. It's that the MPH gives you theoretical structure and the MBA gives you the ability to execute it. And I have a lot of classmates of mine from my program who will say, and I agree with this, the MBA on a daily basis is actually much more impactful in how you make decisions, how you set goals, how you work with a team. And those are the skills that at the end of the day really allow you to advance your vision.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So my sister, Amy, is the chief pediatrician. She's a physician. She's a pediatrician, Chief Pediatrician for the state of Maine, and she also has an MPH and an MBA. And it's interesting to me that we are both physicians who are educated a little while ago and understanding that you really need to draw from a lot of different other areas of expertise. You don't necessarily have to get an MPH and an MBA, but certainly the ability to understand what everybody brings to the table is going to make your efforts much more successful.

John Kuehnle: Absolutely. And I remember from one of my MBA courses, you can know all the theory, you can pass all your tests, you can ace everything, but then once you're in a real world environment and people start behaving like people, it all comes down to those management skills and how do you manage an organization? And yeah, I think it's a great compliment to really any skillset. So yeah, I'm very lucky that it was offered when I was a student and very highly recommend adding an MBA to almost any degree that you're pursuing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I think I also look at your background and the fact that you have this deep background with USAID, but also you have a background with the Peace Corps, and you've been in lots of different places around the world. So you're marrying your educational experience with also an experience with people and understanding what that looks like because it seems to me that the relationship building in the organization that you're working with currently is going to be absolutely critical on the ground to make sure things continue to move forward.

John Kuehnle: Yeah. This is something I've thought about quite a bit, but the real benefit to anybody joining the Peace Corps and serving in the Peace Corps is you get to understand a community and the people at a level that you never have the luxury in your life to do again. And one of the biggest takeaways I had from Peace Corps is we are, and this sounds very obvious and many people I'm sure got it before I did, but we're all humans. We're all identical. We all feel the same emotions, we have the same motivations, we want the same things for our kids and our families and understanding that I think makes you a lot more empathetic and understanding of people's common plights and the scale of somebody's issues may be different in one country or another, but once you understand that, it really changes how you engage with people. And I just have a much deeper respect for everybody I meet and everybody I know because of that Peace Corps experience. And I don't know, I think having that also helps me understand the programs that I manage a lot better because I know what ... I'm always thinking about the beneficiary and the recipient and putting them first. And it's like medicine or any hospital system. You have to be patient focused and you need to put the client and the patient at the center of everything you do, and then you build a system around the patient or the client. And yeah, and that was probably the biggest lesson I learned from Peace Corps and really changed how I thought about things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I know that having spoken to people ... Well, for example, our gallery director, her daughter was in the Peace Corps. I have a cousin, he was in the Peace Corps, and I think that that sort of deeper understanding of people and place and culture is very helpful in general, but also I think the idea that when you are engaging with people, you are also trying to find out, well, what do you think that you need? What is the issue you think you're trying to solve?

John Kuehnle: Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Because I think that, especially in medicine when I first trained, there was this more paternalistic idea that we're going to come in, we're going to tell you what you need, we're going to do almost like a consultant. And instead, that's not really the way it works. I mean, we know from change leadership, change management, you actually have to kind of meet the people and say, "Well, tell us what your perspective on this," because it impacts you. You're the person who's going to be ultimately rolling out programs, for example, or trying to deal with people and working with people in your community. I don't know. I guess I'm just preaching to the choir here, But tell me how you feel about that?

John Kuehnle: No, absolutely. And I think you're spot on. And this is something that I talk to my team at Partners about quite a bit when we're thinking about new programs or new partnerships. And I always try to frame things as around who are we doing this for and why are we doing this? And if the answer is not the client, then we need to reevaluate what we're doing. We should never be doing something because we think somebody needs something. We should only be doing things because we've worked closely with that community to identify what they want. And it's actually one of the things I'm most proud of partners for doing. There are a lot of organizations that source surplus medical supplies and equipment and send it overseas. One of the things that makes partners different is that we work very closely with the recipients to identify exactly what they need. So we have a lengthy list. There's a back and forth where we try to match what they've requested as best as we can. And we can't always match it perfectly, but we do our best to come as close as possible. And we even go down to the level of asking questions about, "Well, if we send you this piece of equipment, do you have the medical technicians or the engineers available to you to maintain the equipment?" So it really has to be a partnership and you can never do something because you think it's the right thing to do. You need to be working with your partner communities to understand what their needs are, and it really has to come from them otherwise ... And I saw this in my nearly 20 years overseas, hospitals and clinics full of medical equipment that was donated to them, sent to them, and they didn't know how to use it, or it broke. And they just have a ... What used to be their pharmacy is now a broken equipment storage room. And we go to great lengths to avoid exactly that scenario. And it's because we listen to our communities and we work with our communities. And it's a partnership. It's not us sending things overseas because it makes us feel good. It's us sending things to communities that we've worked with to identify their needs and match those needs and meet those needs.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That makes me feel really ... And it warms my heart, let's just say, because I think this idea of enabling people to engage in self-efficacy, I mean, that's something, whether you're talking about an individual patient that I might work with, or you're talking about an organization or a country, giving people the tools that they need, helping them to understand how to use the tools, how to work with one another, and really also understanding that they bring their own wealth of knowledge and understanding and background, and not just coming in and saying, "Well, we know better than you do." Because I think that's a trap that sometimes people fall into, particularly when they're trying to do something good for others.

John Kuehnle: Yeah. And there's a power dynamic there that you need to understand and you need to be self-aware that if you are in a donor recipient relationship as the donor, you carry a lot of power that the recipient may not be able to be honest with you because they may feel that they need to placate you in order to get anything. And so that's why going back to Peace Corps, having those relationships, building those relationships, focusing on the human component and making sure that you're creating open lines for honest communication infinitely improves the impact of your work and it creates lasting partnerships. If you don't have that, donor recipient relationships can often be transactional, but when you have a true partnership, it's exactly what you're saying. There's self-efficacy, you're building sustainability, and we may send a container, and after the container supplies have been used up, we have also worked to build systems so that they're able to continue doing what we help them set up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I'm interested in ... I'm going to switch gears a little bit in the fact that we first actually knew you and your family through the art gallery, because when the art gallery was Art Collector Maine and we were doing art of dining events, your family was regularly involved in these art of dining events, so they already ... I'm assuming it was your parents that were-

John Kuehnle: Yep, my mom, Kristen.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Your mom was doing this work to kind of bring people, artists and food into the home and make these interesting connections. So now fast forward, you have your own interest in visual storytelling and you're a photographer, and so art for you continues to kind of circle around. Is there a connecting point for you between sort of your personal and your professional interests?

John Kuehnle: Yeah. So I think it comes down to the fact that I'm a visual person, and that's why I've been into photography since high school, and I was one of the photography editors for my college newspaper. And going back even further, my grandmother was a high school art teacher in Philadelphia. And so there is some lineage there, but I feel like art and the creative opportunities that it gives you just enhances how I think about things and my creativity. And anytime I'm traveling, whether it's for pleasure or work, I mean, my favorite moments are the early mornings when I'm jet lagged and the light is perfect and I can go out and take pictures. I love creating the photographs and I love making the photographs and I love that part of it, but it changes how I think. It relaxes me. It makes me more flexible and more creative. And that carries over into my work and my job. And so I just ... Yeah, I think maybe it's therapeutic. I don't know. I feel like it helps me think better and come up with more creative solutions, whether it's a supply chain challenge, a human resource challenge. It opens my mind to be more creative.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I find it fascinating that we had an opening last night and the founder,

John Kuehnle: Elizabeth was there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Elizabeth McClellan was actually at the Portland Art Gallery, And she's had a long relationship with the art gallery. So I mean, I just continue to find these ways, exactly as you've described, that art just for its own sake, it is very healing. It is very therapeutic. And also it kind of does something with the brain pathways that it kind of fosters problem solving And it helps you lower your stress level so you can engage in problem solving And so this continual kind of interweaving to me, it seems very important.

John Kuehnle: And I think that's why it's just so important that students, learners, adults, that we have access to art through our entire life cycle, through school and through exposure to art. And I'm a terrible painter. I've tried, I cannot do it, but I love photography and there's something for everybody out there. And I think you need to find it and we need to make sure that we create opportunities for people to find that. And I think that's one of the things that the gallery does. And when I've been to receptions there, it's amazing the connections you make and the people you talk to. And yeah, it's a great community service.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: John, if you were talking to your younger self, would you have any advice as to things to do or not to do when thinking about your life?

John Kuehnle: I think it depends on how much of my younger self I'd be talking to.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, pick a formative age for you.

John Kuehnle: Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I'll leave it open to you.

John Kuehnle: Yeah, probably high school and college before I really had kind of more of a global perspective and a global understanding of just how different systems work. I think I would've encouraged myself to be more open to those kinds of experiences. I ended up in the Peace Corps because my father had been a Peace Corps volunteer in one of the very first groups. And so I always heard the stories growing up and thought that that sounded kind of interesting and would be an interesting thing to do, but I don't think I really appreciated the diversity of perspectives and just how big the world is, but also how small and how connected we all are. I wish that I had grasped that earlier. I was lucky to join the Peace Corps when I was 22, so I was young when I had that experience, but that's also one of the reasons my wife and I wanted to raise our kids overseas and our son was born in South Africa and our daughter was born in Boston while we lived in South Africa. So they spent, until 2024, they spent their entire lives overseas and getting that experience. So I did try to make sure that they were exposed to that from a very early age.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So it sounds like you would say maybe be more open-minded, but also I think you embody the fact that you are open-minded and did become open-minded. So you actually giving yourself credit for that being true, at least eventually, maybe not as quickly as you might've liked.

John Kuehnle: Yeah. I think I became open-minded, and I wish I had been more open-minded earlier. Yes, it's certainly possible to get there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I asked this question because I'm sure people of all ages will be interested in Partners for World Health, and whether it's volunteering in kind of the way that makes sense for your current job, like maybe collecting supplies from your organization, with your organization's permission, of course, or a larger role or if you're earlier on in your professional trajectory, maybe you do want to pursue something different. So when you talk about yourself, your younger self, I wonder if that's a lesson that can be applied more broadly.

John Kuehnle: A lot of the opportunities that we have at Partners for different volunteers, we have a lot of student groups come through, high school groups come through and help us sort. We have college interns who are doing paid internships, we have students from the University of New England, University of Maine, and in addition to them volunteering their time with us and helping sorting, we also have what we call medical service trips where we visit a country and provide training to healthcare professionals there that they may not have access to. And so that is something that we like to open up to students. We have a couple of students from the University of Maine traveling to Senegal with us later this year. So we do try to open those opportunities to give people that experience early in their professional careers. And then we have hundreds of retired clinicians and people from other walks of life who are regular volunteers with us and join us because they believe in the cause of reducing the environmental waste and making those connections with communities around the world. So yes, we have something for everybody.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: And I also, I wanted to take a minute just to call out an observation. I have been in Maine for a long time. I've been attached to the medical community for a long time working within it. And when Elizabeth McClellan first started doing this, as a nurse, she went in and I think it probably wasn't as easy to be a nurse going in with a nursing perspective and approaching it that way. And I give her so much credit for persisting because I think it would've been easy to be like, "Oh, well, the doctors tell me I should do it differently, so I should do it differently." And she's like, "No, the nurses have a very strong sort of professional and ethical background that is quite distinct, also equally good to other types of clinical specialists." And so I know this is just historical perspective, but as somebody who's lived through this, I think it's important to call out that Elizabeth saw something that needed to happen and she decided she was going to be the one to do it and she was going to bring her professional experience and education to bear in a way that has become really powerful.

John Kuehnle: Yes. And anybody who knows Elizabeth knows that persistence is one of her most admirable traits. When she decides that she wants to do something, she figures out how to do it. And yeah, I think partners is a testament to somebody seeing something that they think can be fixed and just tirelessly doing everything that they can from taking things home, storing them in your basement, then storing them in your living room and realizing you don't have enough space and then figuring out ways at every opportunity to grow. So I think it's a wonderful story and I think really speaks to the fact that any individual anywhere, if you see something that you think can be fixed, the only thing that's stopping you from fixing it is you taking the initiative to do it and being persistent until it's done. And yeah, I mean, today we send millions and millions of dollars of surplus equipment and supplies to people who need it because of Elizabeth's persistence.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I appreciate everything that she has and is doing, but I also appreciate everything that you are doing and all the volunteers and all the people that work with you are doing with individuals, both within Maine and our country and also around the world. So thank you for all of that.

John Kuehnle: Thank you. I mean, it's really a privilege to be able to do what I do and to do it in Maine and to be surrounded by such an amazing community of volunteers and just the larger Maine community, which is why we came back to Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you've been listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast, where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. I've been speaking with John Kuehnle. He is the CEO of Partners for World Health, and certainly I encourage you if you are interested in finding out more about what you might be able to do for Partners for World Health to look them up. Maybe when, John, when we convince you to come back to the Portland Art Gallery to another one of our openings, then maybe you could even meet John in person. So I'll put that opening out there and thank you again for coming here today and also for everything that you do and much continued success to you.

John Kuehnle: Thank you, Lisa. This has been a pleasure, so thank you.