"Cuando te conviertes en madre, tu perspectiva sobre la vida cambia. Es un sueño que especialistas de cualquier lugar del mundo puedan conectarse para salvar la vida de un pequeño" -Jennifer

A Letter from Jennifer

I experienced the beauty of new motherhood right around the same time as my sister, Lynda. For both of us, the importance of bringing a greater sense of security and well-being to under-served and under-privileged communities truly hit home during that time. We both feel the desire, as never before, to help create a healthier, happier environment for others. We grew up in a neighborhood that was not privileged, with an awareness of what many must go without. The number of children that grow up without access to quality health care, doctors, and health care facilities, is unacceptable. Also unacceptable is the small number of parents who have access to be adequately and completely informed about critical child- and health-care topics.

At the Institute of Pediatric Oncology - Moscow, Russia

That’s why Lynda and I are working to create the Lopez Family Foundation. Our goal is to dramatically increase the availability of quality health care and health education for women and children, regardless of their ability to pay.

Our organization will focus on the health and well-being of women and children, adopting a strategy that will achieve maximum impact in the area of children's health worldwide, through our commitment to telemedicine. Telemedicine is a remarkable new healthcare delivery system that uses telecommunications technology to remotely treat patients.

The world can be a wonderful place, brimming with opportunity. But for far too many, it is still filled with daunting challenges and limited chances for a better life. Please join us as we work to change that picture for the better. Your participation will help us to do more, and to do it more quickly. Please take a few minutes to read through this website and see how you might become involved. Where children are concerned, there is no time to lose.

Gratefully,

Joel E. Barthelemy presented actress and singer Jennifer Lopez with a $50,000 check towards the Lopez Family Foundation

Joel E. Barthelemy, Founder and Managing Director of GlobalMed®—the worldwide leader in real-time healthcare delivery systems—presented actress and singer Jennifer Lopez with a $50,000 check towards the Lopez Family Foundation, which supports the health and wellbeing of women and children through telemedicine. The check was given in honor of Lopez and the foundation being named the winner of the 2013 American Telemedicine Association (ATA) Humanitarian Award.

GlobalMed Founder and Managing Director Joel E. Barthelemy presents a check for $50,000 to actress and singer Jennifer Lopez that will go towards her foundation, the Lopez Family Foundation, which helps provide access to quality healthcare and health education to women and children living in underserved and underprivileged communities. (Photo: Business Wire)

Barthelemy presented the check to Lopez on Wednesday, March 6 in Los Angeles following a video Lopez made for the upcoming ATA annual conference May 5-7 in Austin, TX.

Lopez and her sister, Lynn Lopez, started the foundation to improve access to quality healthcare and health education to women and children living in underserved and underprivileged communities. The goals of the foundation include expanding the number of telemedicine clinics domestically and abroad to increase “access to top quality pediatric care for the most serious cases.”

In a video statement that will be shown at the ATA conference, Lopez said she was honored to receive the Humanitarian Award from the ATA and has seen the positive impact of telemedicine in improving patients’ health and wellbeing.

Barthelemy said he is glad to be able to support a cause that is helping provide much-needed access to healthcare in places with the greatest need.

“The Lopez Family Foundation is an amazing organization that is giving the opportunity for quality healthcare to families and children in areas that need it the most,” Barthelemy said. “We are proud to be able to support this effort and help build on the foundation’s goals.”

About GlobalMed

GlobalMed designs interoperable and customizable solutions for healthcare providers that lower costs and increase access to quality of care, while meeting the medical data and image delivery needs of a full range of healthcare specialties.

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About the American Telemedicine Association

The American Telemedicine Association is the leading international resource and advocate promoting the use of advanced remote medical technologies. ATA and its diverse membership work to fully integrate telemedicine into healthcare systems to improve quality, equity and affordability of healthcare throughout the world. For more information, visithttp://www.americantelemed.org.

UNESCO FOUNDATION CHARITY GALA

As many of you know, my work with the Lopez Family Foundation is very close to my heart. As mothers, my sister Lynda and I recognize the importance of having access to quality health care and the difference it can make for families. Through the foundation, we are committed to providing increased access to resources including clinics, health care education and doctors so that no child is left without. 

With UNESCO Special Ambassador, Dr. Ute Ohoven and my sister, Lynda Lopez.

A few days ago the UNESCO Foundation (United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organization) honored the Lopez Family Foundation with the Pyramide con Marni award, which is nothing short of remarkable.

The gala in Dussledorf united many supporters of the UNESCO Foundation and programs that work toward building stronger communities to create more opportunities. It is truly an honor to be recognized by an organization who works tirelessly around the world to bring children a better future through aid, various programs and education. I'm so proud of what the foundation has been able to achieve and now with this additional opportunity through the UNESCO Foundation, we will be able to continue to grow and provide for underserved communities. 

JENNIFER LOPEZ at UNESCO GALA 2012

Lopez Family Foundation receives UNESCO award for his humanitarian work!

SAMSUNG GALA 2011

Creating Impact in Panama

June, 2012

The Lopez Family Foundation has chosen Panama as the recipient of the Lopez Family Foundation Pediatric Telemedicine Program. We are excited to deliver state-of-the-art digital diagnosis and video conferencing technology to seven health centers across the country for the purpose of improving the pediatric healthcare/patient outcomes, as well as helping to advance medical knowledge at collaborating hospitals and clinics. Partnering with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), this program will enable medical professionals within Panama to seek diagnosis and consultation opportunities between the program’s medical centers and the pediatric specialists at CHLA. The CHLA relationship will also provide the Panamanian medical professionals access to advanced clinical training/continual medical education.

Pediatric Healthcare in Panama

Today in Panama, most children are treated by physicians practicing general family medicine. For the most part, only special cases are referred to a pediatrician or pediatric hospital for focused medical care. 38% of Panama’s population is located within the rural sections of the country. Many of the families living in these areas must travel great distances for medical care. In the Ngöbe-Buglé region, where most of the indigenous population resides, patients must often travel by foot for hours to reach the nearest medical clinic and even further to access specialized pediatric care.

As for the country’s major pediatric medical centers caring for children requiring hospitalization in specialized facilities, two are located in Panama City, and one in the City of David:

Hospital del Niño (Panama City) serves as the primary tertiary care center in the country, consistently dealing with the most complex pediatric cases.
 

Hospital of Pediatric Specialites (Panama City) is a hospital of the Social Security Administration, offering many different pediatric subspecialities.

Hospital Obaldía ( City of David) which serves large groups of children from the Ngöbe-Buglé region and nearby rural areas.

In the past, there has been minimal clinically-focused communication between the three hospitals. The Lopez Family Foundation program will address the need for timely patient and academic-focused communication between those facilities.

Miles outside of the metropolitan areas of Panama, there is an existing small rural videophone-based network which has provided communication linkages  between three indigenous health clinics within the Ngöbe-Buglé region and the Rural Hospital of San Felix (Hospital Obaldía is located 80 km from the Rural Hospital of San Felix) .  Improving these linkages will also be a focus of our work.    

Goals of this Program

The Lopez Family Foundation Pediatric Telemedicine Program is well-suited to address the needs of the pediatric care community in Panama. Building on knowledge gained from implementation of the Foundation’s telemedicine network in Puerto Rico, the team believes that a similarly constructed network can make significant improvement in the overall healthcare system and increase pediatric healthcare accessibility to thousands of people living in rural areas of Panama. The goals for this project include:

Through the use of telemedicine technology, augment the infrastructure within the rural health clinics to improve the access to medical care for local indigenous populations.

Establish telemedicine linkages between the Hospital San Felix, Hospital Obaldía, the Hospital of Pediatric Specialties, and the Hospital del Niño to increase the overall level of clinical collaboration between the institutions, and to train physicians and medical personal in the use of new communication and information technologies to improve the quality of health care in the hospital settings and the communities.

Establish telemedicine linkages between the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the medical centers to provide critical consulting services and medical second-opinions on complex cases across a wide variety of subspecialty areas, and provide their medical professionals access to advanced clinical training/continual medical education.

We are excited about this telemedicine program and our efforts to create an impact on pediatric healthcare in Panama.

Telemedicine

The Foundation will work to expand the number of telemedicine clinics both domestically and abroad, increasing access to top quality pediatric care for the most serious cases. Telemedicine is a remarkable new healthcare delivery system that uses telecommunications technology to conduct medical diagnoses, consultations, treatments, transfers of data, education of physicians, and dissemination of public health alerts and/or emergency updates.

Simply stated, this technology allows patients located all over the world to receive access to care by the physicians at one of America's top pediatric hospitals, the Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Patients living in under-served and under-privileged areas, two groups that are especially vulnerable to inadequate healthcare, can greatly benefit from telemedicine.

Some of the potential benefits of telemedicine are as follows:
 

Access: Telemedicine can allow children with serious childhood diseases in other areas of the world to be examined, diagnosed, and/or treated by the top pediatric oncologists, hematologists, and pediatricians at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Doctors can virtually give patient care to children in different parts of the world.
 

Quality: Telemedicine permits consultations to take place among the referring physician, the consulting physician, the patient, and the patient’s family through interactive video and medical equipment and instruments, with the added benefit of having critical patient information available on-line. Additionally, the physicians or other personnel at remote or under-served locations can be educated before or during the consultations with specialty physicians and other experts, increasing their ability to treat other similar cases in the future.
 

Cost: The travel cost of the patients for specialty care, the travel cost of the health care professionals for continuing education or consultation, the personnel / equipment cost for not having to keep specialty care facility in rural or under-served hospitals, and other costs can be either eliminated or reduced.

Better Care & New Resources for Puerto Rico

October, 2010

The Lopez Family Foundation is excited to announce the launch of our first telemedicine center in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the San Jorge Children's Hospital, and a second link coming shortly at the University Pediatric Hospital at the Centro Medico. Health care personnel in Puerto Rico helped our partners at Children's Hospital Los Angeles identify two crucial areas of need regarding pediatric medical treatment on the island: genetic disease, and pediatric radiology.

The two hospitals face significant challenges in providing quality medical care for children suffering from serious illnesses. These children either cannot pay for their care, or are limited in terms of their access to specialty care due to insurance limitations. These are areas on which the Lopez Family Foundation is focused and is passionate about making a difference. Through the power of telemedicine, the Foundation can bring the most up-to-date treatments to the most seriously-ill of patients, and address the need for advance medical training for local physicians through regular videoconferencing and online teaching sessions. We are excited to have the opportunity to partner with both the Hospital San Jorge and the University Pediatric Hospital to offer Tele-Radiology and Tele-Genetic services.

View a photo gallery of our visit to Puerto Rico

Tele-Radiology:

Puerto Rico suffers from a dearth of pediatric radiologists on the island, which in some instances can mean that interpretations of infant and child diagnostic MRI or CT studies are delayed. In turn, this can lead to potential misdiagnosis or inappropriate care. At a minimum, it can leave local Radiologists without 100% confidence in their diagnosis. The heartbreaking possibility of more serious outcomes for the littlest patients because of this lack of resource was one that our partners at CHLA, through the support of the Lopez Family Foundation, were eager to help solve. The CHLA team has years of experience in advance pediatric radiology, and through the creation of a telemedicine center in San Juan, they were confident they could deploy these services quickly and with great success.

For the Hospital San Jorge, the Foundation will provide:
 

Remote second-opinion of CT and MRI images of critically-ill children by the experts at CHLA via live link to Puerto Rico from Los Angeles. Images are sent to Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) on an as-needed basis when the hospital needs confirmation of a diagnosis on a particularly complex case.
 

Case discussion of reviewed studies to provide mutual learning opportunities.

Tele-Genetics:

With relatively few medical centers on the island of Puerto Rico that serve the “Reforma” or Medicaid (State
insurance) population, and a geography that isolates some of its residents, large numbers of children do not have
easy access to medical specialists. Genetic conditions afflict many of these children, and with only one full-time
Pediatric Geneticist in Puerto Rico who serves the Reforma community, wait times for genetic consultations can take up to 1-2 years for new appointments. Many of these patients also require Genetics laboratory tests, which can take weeks to return, and may not be covered by their insurance.

For the University Pediatric Hospital, the Foundation, in partnership with Samsung, provided the equipment and
resources to make the following programs possible:

A live telemedicine "clinic," for infant and child patients and their families in Puerto Rico, conducted by physicians from the Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The CHLA genetics team will be able to examine, diagnose, and help treat patients that they will see live, on-camera from Puerto Rico via the telemedicine link. Follow-up visits with CHLA Geneticists will be scheduled as needed via the telemedicine network.

Most patients that come to the clinic will be outpatients, but for those who are not, tele-genetics workstation is on a mobile cart that can be wheeled up to the bedside, so that tests may be done without the patient having to leave their bed.

The Lopez Family Foundation will also cover the costs of specific laboratory tests for patients - tests and exams that the Reforma insurance may not cover (or for children who lack insurance) and which are deemed critical for the well-being of the child.

Click Here to see video of our launch visit to Puerto Rico

As part of both programs, CHLA will be able to provide specialty training for doctors and medical personnel in Puerto Rico to increase their ability to provide the highest level, most up-to-date specialty care, without having to travel to the States to acquire the additional training in their field. This program allows us to realize yet another of the Lopez Family Foundation's goals: being able to raise the level of care in a that can be offered locally in a remote location, through the training and expertise of top specialists at one of the United States' best children's hospitals.

Distance Education for Radiology and Genetics

CHLA Radiologists and other specialists will deliver case discussions and lectures via live videoconference several times monthly to medical residents and staff in San Juan.

Videoconference sessions are recorded, and are being archived for future download purposes by all participating clinicians in the Lopez Family Telemedicine Program.

When future countries are launched for the Lopez Family Telemedicine Program, the technology will enable those countries to initiate medical conferences themselves.

We are honored by the opportunity to create these partnerships, and for the potential to change health outcomes for the better for newborns and children. We are excited to begin providing these vital services to begin to impact those most in need in Puerto Rico.

sSAMSUNG GALA 2010