Life Enhancement Association for People (LEAP) is celebrating 20 years of enhancing and enriching the lives of people around the world by providing free reconstructive surgery and other medical care.
LEAP consists of volunteer plastic surgeons, urologists, eye surgeons, anesthesiologists, orthodontists, nurses, and support staff dedicating time, expertise, and often their own resources to bring free surgical care to children and adults born with deformities.
"I wanted to find a way to use my skills as a surgeon to help people who didn't have access to reconstructive surgical care," said P. Craig Hobar, MD, LEAP's founder and medical director and director of international craniofacial development at Medical City Children's Hospital in Dallas, in a press release. "So many kids have to grow up with the embarrassment of a facial deformity because they live in a country with few or no surgeons who can perform this type of surgery. We wanted to provide for the people out there who are counting on us."
With the help of two volunteer nurses, Hobar founded LEAP in 1991. As fully equipped surgical units, LEAP travels to remote areas such as central India, Zimbabwe, Laos, and others. LEAP became an integral force in the Haiti reconstructive effort, sending more than 20 teams and 170 volunteers to Haiti from January to June and caring for more than 1,000 patients.
The organization also takes annual trips to the Dominican Republic, bringing cleft lip and palate, craniofacial, and hand surgery; ophthalmologic surgery; eye prosthetics; and orthodontics to that region.
For medical situations that are difficult to address onsite, LEAP has a special fund -- the Landmark Fund -- created by a generous donor, allowing some children with extremely complicated medical deformities to be brought to the U.S., where LEAP doctors and nurses perform the complex reconstructive procedures.
LEAP also provides teaching clinics for patient families with feeding and care instruction, as well as field and classroom training for local surgeons on state-of-the-art practices and procedures.
