About Operation Smile Guwahati Comprehensive Cleft Care Centre, India in MMC Hospital, Panbazar, Guwahati, Assam, Gauhati

The mission of our group is to rigorously document, analyze, and critique all aspects of our clinical care. Our goal is to improve the quality of our own care, and ultimately to contribute to the knowledge, standards, and practices of cleft care in the developing world. Academic analysis of surgical care in the developing world has been traditionally difficult and lacking, with significant challenges to patient return, proper documentation, and earnest analysis. The volume and motivation of patients in this region provides tremendous opportunity for translational research that can positively affect care in the very near future.
The group will be centered in the Plastic Surgery Division at our facility in Guwahati, and will involve locally based members as well as participants and partners from around the world. We are proud to announce current collaborations with plastic surgeons from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Florida, and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. We are additionally pleased to be partnered closely with Research and Outcomes Division of Operation Smile International in Norfolk, which has generously offered support in the form of software and equipment, data availability, project collaboration, and database management. We are formally seeking an Institutional Review Board for oversight and approval of our projects in India.
Justin Gillenwater, an Operation Smile Research fellow and University of Southern California Plastic Surgery Resident, is currently focused on these efforts and residing in Guwahati for a three month period. He has been central in our initial efforts, and his excellent productivity will only increase as he commits to continued presence here during the next 18 months. We have also recently hosted three Masters of Public Health Students from the University of Southern California, funded by grants from the USC Institute of Global Health. Stephanie Ly, Kelly Leech, and Minh Tran joined us for the most recent 509 patient mission, inaugurating our model for research internships in Guwahati. The experience has been extremely positive thus far, with progress on center projects as well as personal and professional benefits to the participants. Three additional medical students are pursuing plans to join us this summer, and have grant applications in various stages of approval. Operation Smile Regan and Stryker Fellows are likewise invited to pursue their research commitments through participation in our projects.
It is our hope and intention to welcome and involve all interested clinicians and researchers who have like-minded interests and goals. We have had five formal research meetings thus far, with the latest meeting involving teleconferencing with partners in both Los Angeles and Norfolk. We will continue to hold regularly scheduled meetings, and invite participation via global video conferencing for enhanced communication.
As we continue to fulfill our commitment to the children of Assam, and seek to develop a new paradigm of global cleft care in the developing world, we must thoroughly assess our patients and performance on an ongoing basis. Sincere and rigorous evaluation will undoubtedly provide invaluable insight, and most importantly, direction towards improved care. We sincerely hope that the Research and Outcomes Division in Guwahati will provide the mechanism for collaborations, partnerships, and friendships that will make significant contributions to cleft care in the developing world.