Thought Leadership

Operation Smile staff and volunteers are at the forefront of cleft research and collaboration.

Operation Smile was proud to participate as a programming partner at the 2024 Concordia Summit. Our Chief Strategy Officer, Kristie Magee Porcaro, led an engaging fireside chat titled “A Blueprint for Sustainable Access to Surgical Care.” In this session, Porcaro explored how innovative solutions and strategic partnerships can address barriers to health care access, such as distance, financial challenges and gaps in medical infrastructure. The conversation highlighted the power of collaboration across sectors to build stronger, more resilient communities and transform global health care.

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Operation Smile Publications

Our research initiatives encompass a wide variety of topics covering cleft-specific and general surgical care, including epidemiology, genetics, barriers to care, surgical outcomes, leadership, health systems, policy, and education and training.

Global Surgery Fellowship

We believe a critical part of creating a future where access to safe, affordable and timely surgical care is available to everyone is to cultivate the next generation of global health leaders. To that end, we have developed the Global Surgery Fellowship program, which gives young medical professionals long-term opportunities to expand and enhance their global health knowledge and expertise. The fellows are fully integrated into Operation Smile’s work and gain exposure to research, advocacy and on-ground programmatic global surgery initiatives in the low-and middle-income countries where we work.

This flexible two-year program continues to grow and evolve from its original partnership with the University of Southern California and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Since its inception in 2011, 25 fellows from 13 countries have participated in the program.

Fellows are given the opportunity to conduct work that will directly impact the way we provide care, engage with our local teams and interact with governments and ministries of health.

  • Project Support: Fellows will support both pilot and ongoing initiatives as medical advisors, thought leaders, monitors and evaluators, and programmatic designers. They will champion the dissemination of organizational best-practices and programmatic innovation to the broader public health and medical communities through local, national and international presentations and scientific publications.
  • Research: Fellows will conduct clinical and population-based research projects related to surgical care delivery, surgical disease burden, barriers to care, education, epidemiology, genetics and operative outcomes, among other areas. Experience will include grant writing, study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript development and dissemination of the results to key stakeholders.
  • Global Surgery Advocacy: Fellows will attend conferences, key global surgery events and meetings with country leaders and ministries of health. Advocacy efforts will support the organizations’ strategies and impact within the global surgery arena. Through close work with key organizational leaders, fellows will also have opportunities to speak on behalf of the organization.

Meet the Fellows

Meet our current Global Surgery Fellows.

Meet the Junior Fellows

Meet our Global Surgery Junior Fellows.

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