Reciprocal Innovation: Rethinking Global Health Equity with Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah

Innovation is often thought to flow in one direction: from high-income countries outward. Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah has spent her career challenging that assumption.

In this episode of The Scopewell Podcast, James Leuthe sits down with Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and Co-Founder and President of the Ghanaian Diaspora Nursing Alliance (gDNA), to explore reciprocal innovation and how research, community leadership, and diaspora partnerships can improve health outcomes across borders.

The conversation explores why diaspora-led organizations often outlast traditional grant-funded global health programs, how a solution developed for rural Ghana could help address challenges in rural America, and what it takes to turn promising ideas into lasting impact.

What we cover:

• Why diaspora-led organizations often outlast grant-funded global health initiatives
• How gDNA has grown into a global network spanning more than 30 African countries
• MAMA-CVD: training unemployed midwives to detect heart failure using portable ultrasound
• The concept of reciprocal innovation, and why ideas can flow in every direction
• What most healthcare leaders get wrong when trying to move from idea to outcome
• Dr. Commodore-Mensah's vision for the future of global health and the role of the diaspora

Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah is Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, President of the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association, and Co-Founder and President of the Ghanaian Diaspora Nursing Alliance (gDNA).

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The Scopewell Podcast features candid conversations with leaders transforming how organizations think, operate, and grow. Hosted by James Leuthe, CEO of Scopewell Solutions, the podcast explores leadership, AI, digital transformation, and the operational realities of turning ideas into measurable impact. Each season goes deep into a different industry and the challenges of driving meaningful change inside complex organizations.

Hello, and welcome to the Scopewell podcast.

My name is James Leuthe.

Today, we're going to talk about global health equity, diaspora engagement, and what it actually takes to turn ideas into impact across borders.

Joining me is Dr.

Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, professor and associate dean for research at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and cofounder and president of the Ghanaian Diaspora Nursing Alliance,

gDNA.

Yvonne, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank

you so much for having me, James.

So

you wear many hats as a professor, a researcher running clinical trials in the US and in Africa, and health care nonprofit leadership.

There's a thread that runs through all of it.

I want to pick that up.

Can you share a bit about your background in health care and your journey to this point?

I'm

happy to.

I'll first share that, as you said, I wear many But I first identify as a nurse.

I started my career at the bedside in cardiac care, and what I kept seeing was the same patients that kept coming back

with the same conditions, the same barriers, and the same outcomes.

And so, I realized that all I was seeing at that moment was what was happening at the bedside.

And at that time, I didn't really know how they were described, these differences.

I got to learn about health disparities.

And these are preventable differences in health outcomes, whether it's by race, ethnicity, by cultural background.

A lot of these differences in health care outcomes are preventable.

And so that inspired my journey to pursue research.

And not just any kind of research, research that is considered community engaged, but also taking the abundance of evidence that exists

and translating it into real world.

Settings.

How do we get guidelines, for instance, translated into primary care clinics but also to communities?

What does it mean to maintain cardiovascular health?

And I also think what's unique to my background is that I apply a local health equity as well as a global health equity lens.

I must first disclose that I am an immigrant.

I was not born in the US, and so I apply that lens to everything I do.

Because when I arrived in the US, more than two decades ago, I also had to navigate the health care system and really understand

how to access care, also how to speak the language and understand the differences in the different types of health insurance that was available.

And so it makes me sensitive, to the unique needs of immigrant populations, but also populations that are considered underserved.

Thank

you so much for That background.

So, a few things.

You started as a cardiac nurse before making a move to research.

Could you say a little bit more about specifically what you were seeing on the bedside that made you feel the problems were bigger than individual care?

I'll

provide a concrete example.

So for instance, cardiac patients, many of them may have what we call heart failure.

So it's when your heart is not functioning well as a pump.

And so, often you'll have patients who may be admitted for a short period of time, to manage their condition and to help get rid of

what we call a fluid overload.

And what I would notice is that there were some patients who would often come back with the same issues and would be readmitted almost every other thirty days.

So every thirty days they'll come back, and they're readmitted, In fluid overload, we manage their medications, and then we send them back home, and they

come back every 30 days.

That also got me interested in what was happening outside of the health care system.

So we know that in terms of the causes of these disparities, it's not just access in health care.

For some patients, when they go home, they may not have access to healthy foods.

So foods that are low in sodium for patients with heart failure, it's important that they don't consume foods that are too high in sodium because that's how they end up back in the hospital

with fluid overload.

And for some patients who have to take medications, they may not be able to afford medications or they may run out of medications.

And so that also gets them back in the hospital.

And for other patients, they may not Actually understand the condition.

So what are some of the ways to manage heart failure?

What are the ways to comply with the therapy, whether it's medication or lifestyle changes, or when to actually seek care?

So these are all the things that happen outside the hospital setting that influence whether or not someone is admitted.

But also, importantly, is the need to understand how to prevent heart failure in the first place.

And so that's how I became very interested in what causes heart failure and other cardiovascular conditions.

And lo and behold, it's mostly related to hypertension or high blood pressure.

So I became very interested in hypertension as a risk factor for heart disease, kidney disease, dementia, and other complications.

So if we can manage hypertension well and prevent hypertension in the first place, then we can also prevent heart failure from

occurring.

And heart failure can Be very deadly.

So I apply a prevention lens to a lot of the work that I do.

Yes, nurses and health care professionals should manage patients at the bedside, but we also need to prevent these cardiovascular conditions from occurring

in the first place.

Let's

pivot GDNA.

What led you to founding the organization?

As

she said earlier, I do have my full time job as a professor at Hopkins.

And I as a student, became a member of a professional organization.

The first professional organization I joined was the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association, and that's where I got exposed to the collective power

of health care professionals, either advocating for issues, developing patient education materials.

And so that also got me interested in understanding what nursing looks like in the US compared to what nursing looks like back home.

So as I mentioned earlier.

I am an immigrant.

I was born in Ghana, and so I often visited the hospitals.

And I also got to see what nurses could do at the bedside and how they perhaps were not considered partners with physicians.

But in the U.S., I would say that nurses Their scope of practice is a little more advanced.

Nurse practitioners have more autonomy.

And so, along with my cofounder, Dr.

Matilda Decker, we thought that with our unique backgrounds as Guinean nurses at Johns Hopkins, and also having access to a wealth of

resources, and also people who are very talented and experts in their fields.

How can we learn from some of these lessons here and support our colleagues back home to advance the nursing profession.

So when we think about global health, often the framing is people coming from high income countries like the US going to Places Africa

and doing projects.

And often those projects are tied to grant funding.

And so what happens when you lose the funding or the project ends?

Often, many of these projects collapse and, the team disappears.

And so what's different about this diaspora model is that, we have skin in the game.

I have family back home.

Most of our members are highly invested in the success of the organization because this is deeply personal.

It allows us to mobilize, health care professionals, not just nurses but from all over the world.

And people, I to say, who are Ghanaian at heart.

You don't have to have a Ghanaian passport.

We welcome any and everyone who cares about global health because if we uplift the nursing profession, nurses can do so much more to improve health care.

But also, if you were to visit Ghana and you Needed health care, we want to make sure that the care that you receive is from the highest qualified and skilled

nurse possible.

And we think that by creating this organization, we have created this bridge between nurses in Africa and on the continent

with their counterparts all over the world.

So

you mentioned PCNA.

I think it's important for us to recognize you're still engaged with them and recently stepped into which role?

Oh,

yes.

So I became a member of PCNA about sixteen years ago, and I'm currently the president of the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association.

So I get to do that in addition to gDNA.

So, yes, it's a lot of work, but honestly, I do think that it's very complementary because both organizations seek to empower and advance

nurses all over the world.

And

congratulations on that.

So gDNA has grown to more than 3,800 members.

Across multiple countries in just three years.

What does that actually look like on the ground for your members?

How does that translate into a real impact?

So

when we officially launched about four years ago, I have to say that this was a bold step.

And we didn't take that step without consulting with nurse leaders on the ground.

We spent about six months meeting with leaders, nurses, midwives to really understand our unique health care context.

Because I trained as a nurse in the US.

Yes, I was born in Ghana, but I, at that time, didn't have any experience providing care in Ghana.

So through those sessions, we got to learn a lot, and we heard from the nurses the things that mattered to them.

They wanted more opportunities for professional development.

They wanted more collaborations with your counterparts all over the world.

They also expressed A desire for instance, mannequins improving their skills labs so that they can apply all the concepts they're reading about in a

textbook, but also get to really practice in simulation labs.

And so That gave us the courage to formalize the organization.

And so we officially launched, the University of Ghana, and we actually now have over 4,500 members, and all over the world.

So people are not deterred by the fact that we have Ghanaian in the title or the name of our organization.

In fact, we have members from over 30 African countries who are our members.

So what does it mean to have established this organization that continues to grow?

I'll tell you that we had a conference in Ghana two years ago, and I had one of the nurses who had practiced for about fifteen years walk up to me.

And she thanked me and our team for creating this nonprofit organization, passion project, which is a

volunteer-led organization.

And she said, Yvonne, for the first time in my career, I feel proud to be a nurse.

She went on to say that our organization had helped to dignify the profession because we had found a way to bring experts from

all over the world to their doorsteps, to Ghana.

We provided keynote presentations.

We provided free CPR classes.

We provided workshops on quality improvement and research, and many of them expressed that this was the first time that nurses and midwives in the

country had that kind of avenue to not just learn online but be in the same spaces as more experienced nurses but also

experts from all over the world.

So I can tell you how gratifying it is every time we converge.

In Ghana.

And every year when we feel this is amazing, the following year it always gets better.

And for the first time this year, in 2026, we made it an interdisciplinary conference.

And in addition to having nurses and midwives from Ghana and all over the world, we also had physicians and pharmacists in the same space, because health care is a

team sport.

So as we grow, we acknowledge that it's going to take not just nurses, it's going to take all health care professionals to advance the nursing and midwifery

profession, but also improve health outcomes for all.

Can

you say more about what you think it unlocks when you bring all these different disciplines together in person?

I

think one of the things it does is it levels the playing field.

We had a workshop focused on customer service in health care, and People were really surprised that of all the topics we could have picked,

we picked customer service.

And we selected that topic because, after engaging with people who have been patients in hospitals, and also reflecting on some of our lived

experiences, we recognized that there was an opportunity for clinicians, nurses, physicians, pharmacists to have a customer service orientation,

and also allow patients to express themselves, ask questions.

And so we had two physicians and a midwife who met over a period of four weeks to plan that workshop.

And the midwife in this case also said to me this was the first time she ever had an opportunity to plan anything with physicians.

And so they planned the workshop and they delivered it successfully.

And again, having nurses sitting right next to physicians and pharmacists in the same space, I think it created an environment where

everyone's expertise.

Everyone's opinion was valued, and everyone had an opportunity to learn together.

I think that it's important that we create these spaces where, this hierarchy that often exists in health care, we find a way to eliminate that.

Because when we place patients at the center of any health care conversation, the ones who benefit are our patients.

But a lot of these turf wars in terms of who's in charge it gets in the way.

And our conference attempted to do that by really creating more workshops that are interdisciplinary.

And the last one I'll share is we had a workshop on innovation.

We have the opportunity to partner with Johnson and Johnson and Microsoft.

They have this signature program called Nurse Hack for Health.

And the whole idea is that you need to recognize that nurses are also innovators.

And so we Organized this workshop at the conference, but we had pharmacists and physicians also show up to this workshop to learn about innovation.

And so by creating an avenue where you're at the table with not just nurses from the same region but from all over the world, and also sitting with other

disciplines, it really allows us to bring our best to the table, but it also helps us to value our unique skills and expertise.

What

inspired the hackathon, and what innovations came from it?

I'll

share that.

What inspired that hackathon in Ghana was GDNA participating in the Nurse Hack for Health competition and actually winning in

2024.

So we competed against a lot of hospitals all over the world, and the innovation that we proposed was that Ghana has a unique

problem of unemployed midwives.

But we also have technology as a tool, and we have, point Of care ultrasound devices that are handheld can be

used by midwives, especially in rural areas.

So, as we think about the health care workforce, in many parts of Ghana and Africa, there aren't enough cardiologists.

For instance, Ghana has about 30 cardiologists for a population of 30,000,000.

So think about people in rural areas who may not have access to a cardiologist.

So if you have a pregnant woman who has heart failure during pregnancy, if there isn't a cardiologist, can you train a midwife to use

this technology to detect heart failure, but also refer them to get seen by a cardiologist?

So that's the model that we proposed.

And we won this hackathon, and we were able to conduct this proof of concept.

We brought about 57 midwives from all over.

Donna, we were able to demonstrate that indeed, midwives can learn how to use A point of care ultrasound.

They can correctly identify different parts of the heart, any abnormalities.

So we did that successfully.

So that experience, one of the things it did was that it really showcased highlighted the important roles of

nurses as innovators in health care.

And so borrowing from that experience and also learning from what it takes to create a pitch and compete and also

talk about sustainability and the business model.

We said we can't just stop there.

We want to make sure that nurses across the country and across the continent get a taste of that, what it means to come up with a health care problem and try to solve

it, not alone but with your colleagues.

So that's what our hackathon at the conference sought to do.

And you had to be there.

I'll tell you the organizers said That was the most engaging and entertaining hackathon experience they had ever had because every single person

in the room was really excited to learn.

And that has been one of the biggest learnings from all the work we've done with GDNA, that young nurses and midwives on the continent, they're

hungry for more.

And it's up to us, not just as GDNA but other healthcare organizations, to consider how we can partner,

collaborate, and share knowledge.

And the last thing I'll say is that it's also taught us that innovation, as we think about innovation, the standard of traditional ways to think about

innovation coming from high income countries to low income countries like Ghana.

What we've learned through that experience is that we really need to focus on what we call reciprocal innovation, which acknowledges that knowledge does not

necessarily only come from a place where there's An abundance of resources, but innovation, some of the best ideas can come from low

resource settings.

And we also, in the US and the UK, can learn from how nurses and midwives use very little resources to keep people

alive.

And so, more than anything, I hope that through MAMA CVD and all the work that we're doing demonstrates that there's an

opportunity to value different sources of innovation and an innovative idea that can change the world can come from anywhere in the

world.

For

the listeners, can you explain MAMA CVD?

Yes.

So,

MAMA CVD is an acronym that stands for Midwife Assisted Assessment and Monitoring of Cardiovascular Disease.

It says MAMA CVD for short.

But it was designed for Ghana by Ghanaian nurses and midwives, and the whole notion was that we need to meet people where they are,

especially in rural areas.

And we Can adopt what we call a team based care approach where, traditionally, a task that may be done by a physician or a cardiologist.

We're not seeing that midwives are replacing cardiologists.

We're seeing we don't have enough of them.

So how do we effectively engage and utilize the limited resource of having about 30 cardiologists?

But how do we also take advantage of having unemployed midwives who could potentially be hired to partner with cardiologists and

go into communities where they actually already are?

I learned quickly when we started doing health fairs in Ghana that if you go In Ghana, they're called CHPS compounds.

So there are community health clinics that are in every community.

You may likely not find a physician, but you will always find a midwife.

So you do have midwives who are not just delivering babies, but they're also providing primary care.

And we want to equip them with the right tools such as point of care ultrasound devices, but other technology to make their work more

efficient, but also allow them to be able to detect, heart disease if it exists.

But more importantly, the last piece of this puzzle is connecting them, right, to cardiologists so that they can take on the management

of, of heart failure during pregnancy.

Powerful.

Where

do you see the biggest opportunity for that kind of thinking to reshape care here?

You mentioned reciprocal innovation.

We've