Train the surgeon, not just the patient — a Sandy nonprofit's "Teach One, Reach Many" model for urology capacity in thirty countries.
IVUmed
resource active confidence: Medium status: Draft updated 2026-08-11
Summary
Sandy nonprofit IVUmed trains urology teams in low-resource countries instead of relying on one-off mission surgeries (official site). That train-the-surgeon model can compound beyond each visit; the remaining Utah evidence gap is Catherine deVries's current university appointment.
Who It's For
Urologists, pediatric surgeons, nurses, and teaching hospitals in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America seeking sustained surgical training partnerships — and U.S. volunteers donating teaching time and travel.
What It Provides
Surgical teaching workshops (the organization reports 25–30 per year approaching its 30th anniversary), traveling resident scholarships, virtual visiting-professor lectures, and on-site capacity building (who we are). The homepage emphasizes medical and surgical education plus treatment for children and adults in low-resource settings (official site).
A peer-reviewed paper co-authored by deVries describes IVUmed's model as coordinating urological education in 30 LMICs over 20 years with a teach-the-teacher emphasis rather than one-off missions (Annals of Global Health, 2015).
IRS filings show a mid-six-figure operation — $242,867 revenue and $745,813 assets in FY2023 (IRS record).
How To Use It
- Website: https://www.ivumed.org/
- Address: 1914 East 9400 South, #448, Sandy, UT 84093; (512) 859-6509 (official site)
- Medical volunteer application and workshop calendar on the site
Open Questions
- deVries's current University of Utah appointment — ORCID lists Utah among affiliations but no primary faculty page was captured here.
- FY2024 990-EZ shows $0 revenue in the API extract (IRS record) — likely reporting lag or accounting-period artifact; the PDF was not pulled.
- Whether IVUmed still performs direct patient care missions in addition to training — the captured materials emphasize training; the peer-reviewed paper's "treatment" language is less detailed than the training claims.
Evidence
- Source: IVUmed Official Website · https://www.ivumed.org/
- Source: IVUmed — Who We Are Page · https://www.ivumed.org/who-we-are
- Source: IRS Form 990 Record — IVUmed · https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/api/v2/organizations/582263983.json
- Source: Jalloh et al., "IVUmed: A Nonprofit Model for Surgical Training in Low-Resource Countries" (Annals of Global Health, 2015) · https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2015.03.001
- DeVries et al., "Clinical Use of the Total Artificial Heart" (NEJM, 1984) · https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM198402023100501 — disambiguation only: William C. DeVries, not Catherine deVries