Healthy Hair Dream Team Helps Salvage Limbs in Vietnam

Lam Le MD, the medical director of St. John Outpatient wound center, has been able to build a charity wound care foundation in Vietnam thanks to her thriving MONAT business. Her foundation, Heal Foundation, was born when she found out about Harvard University’s vascular anomaly clinic at a medical conference that she attended. Dr. Le traveled with the Harvard group to Vietnam to care for patients and when she saw patients who could not pay for their own medical care, she was inspired to go back to provide wound care for indigent patients.

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In the meantime, as a physician, she ignored most of the cosmetic advertisements that she came across on her Facebook feed. But when she noticed a friend’s new profile photo, she contacted her friend to ask about the product she was using on her noticeably more attractive hair. Dr. Le initially wanted to buy the product for herself. While she was looking for a good deal, she stumbled on the opportunity to become a market partner for the hair product. She had already been looking for a way to fund her dream clinic in Vietnam when the MONAT opportunity came up. So she tried the product herself and observed the results on a few friends and colleagues. Convinced that it worked to improve the appearance of hair and to regrow hair, she was quickly able to bring on 15 team members, who brought on more team members. Currently, Dr. Le is the leader of a 1500-person team, called the HEALthy Hair Dream Team.

Now her business, which initially started as a way to build some residual income for the wound care foundation, has been a very successful endeavor. And that has translated into growth for Heal Foundation. After her trip with Harvard University’s medical team, Dr. Le started helping fill the need in wound care by giving supplies to a hospital in Vietnam. Then, her foundation set up a wound care clinic. Now she is able to able to take a whole medical team, including orthopedic surgeons and a vascular surgeon to provide free wound care to indigent patients in Vietnam. Heal foundation takes a team of 20+ medical professionals on humanitarian missions to Vietnam twice a year. Dr. Le says, "We do continued medical education and training at our wound clinic while building a limb salvage program at Cho Ray hospital. We also pay off medical bills for cancer patients who are unable to afford treatment. On our last trip we paid off medical bills for over 100 patients." And, in order to help improve wound care for the long term, the foundation pays for wound care doctors from Vietnam to travel to the United States for training. The foundation will be opening a second free clinic in Vietnam and one in Tulsa, Oklahoma this year.

Dr. Le is passionate about everything she does, and that is what makes her seemingly diverse interests of hair care and wound care blend together so well. Clearly able to motivate people, Dr. Le speaks of as herself as a team member, even when she has the role of a leader. To find out more about Heal Foundation, see their website healfoundationusa.com.