Dr. David Gaus ’84
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Dr. David Gaus is the founder of Andean Health & Development and has served as its Chief Executive Officer since 1994. David grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and attended Notre Dame where he received an accounting degree in 1984. After a soul-searching conversation with then University President, Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, David traveled to Ecuador where he spent two years volunteering at an orphanage.
He returned to the U.S. where, with the assistance of Fr. Hesburgh and the famous columnist Ann Landers, David re-enrolled at Notre Dame to complete his pre-med studies and then enrolled in Tulane Medical School. In 1992, David earned his M.D. and Master’s in Public Health & Tropical Medicine from Tulane.
In 1996, David and Fr. Hesburgh started AHD to provide self-sustaining, comprehensive health care to the rural poor. Their pilot project was a hospital in the underserved community of Pedro Vicente Maldonado (PVM). The hospital opened in 2000, and by 2007, was financially self-sustaining. Hospital PVM provides high-quality care to an extended community of 80,000 and is a training ground for physicians and other leaders in the local community. A second teaching hospital and clinic, Hesburgh Hospital, opened in Santo Domingo, Ecuador in 2014 and achieved self-sustainability in 2018. Both hospitals have public-private partnerships with the government of Ecuador and its social security system. David Gaus and AHD have now expanded this successful hospital and training model to another community in Ecuador, called Santo Domingo. David and his family live in Quito, Ecuador.
“A global citizen embraces the uncertainty of life. Finding and living a passion requires a calculated leap of faith amidst that uncertainty.”
Dr. David Gaus
Learn more about Dr. David Gaus’s work:
- Video: Andean Health & Development: A 20 Year Retrospective
- Video: Andean Health & Development
- Video: Dr. David Gaus ‘84, speaks as part of the Alumni Association’s Fr. Ted Said Speaker Series during Reunion 2019 – Fr. Ted Said… Civil & Human Rights: Dr. David Gaus ’84