David Werner, author (“Where There are No Doctors”) and health activist, is co-founder and director of HealthWrights (Workgroup for People’s Health and Rights) and a visiting professor at Boston University International School of Public Health. A biologist and educator by training, he has worked for the past 40 years in village health care, community-based rehabilitation, and “Child-to-Child” health initiatives in the Third World, mainly Mexico. From 1965 through the early 90s he was a facilitator and advisor to Project Piaxtla, a pioneering villager-run program which contributed to the initial conceptualization and evolution of Primary Health Care. Out of Piaxtla grew PROJIMO, an innovative community-based rehabilitation program organized and run by the disabled youth of Western Mexico. David, who has a physical disability himself, is still very active in this program as well as in a sister program that designs and constructs personalized children’s wheelchairs at low cost.

David has advised, inspired and assisted ProsthetiKa consistently during its work in Mexico and particularly with PROJIMO. Besides his organizational assistance, he joins in all patient evaluations and frequently will take a patient into the shop and fabricate a brace himself.