Koranda has already made his own remarkable contributions to the world, even before entering the Doctor of Nursing Practice program. In 2018, he and a fellow paramedic traveled to Arusha, Tanzania, to lead six weeks of education and training around emergency medical services for local doctors and nurses. Arusha, like many other cities in the east African country, lacks a formal emergency medical services system, with those responsibilities generally falling to police officers.
“If you look globally, trauma in general takes more lives than HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined, but receives only 1% of the world’s global funding for care,” says Koranda.
That first trip to Tanzania turned into the nonprofit KOPI, which Koranda launched in 2019 to bring together emergency medical services education and mental health training. KOPI teams have returned to Arusha three more times to train police officers, partnering with a local psychologist to incorporate mental health components. KOPI already has plans to expand its work into another region in Tanzania in 2024.
