Mark Hannaford - Founder and CEO of World Extreme Medicine
Last year, the Red Square Medical team descended on the World Extreme Medicine (WEM) conference for the very first time. We’d been aware of this unique organisation for many years, but just not had the chance to get involved.
Liz was involved in a panel discussion and spoke at the conference, and we came away literally buzzing with enthusiasm - our first impressions were that WEM is a place with no ego’s, where everyone wants to learn, and is willing to share. We met some of the most fascinating people ever and can’t wait to go back this year.
But what about the person who started it all…
We spoke to Mark Hannaford, founder of World Extreme Medicine and its far reaching impact. Here’s what he had to say.
I’ve been involved in expeditions, working in low resource environments and extreme medicine for the past three decades! My family was made up of generations of seafarers from Cornwall although I was brought up variously in Devon, Antigua in the Caribbean and the Middle East; reflecting my father’s job as a Master Mariner. My father was at one time the youngest captain aboard the UK’s largest registered vessel, and my grandfather was Harbour Master for Malta and the first in that role in Plymouth at the start of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
I wear a number of hats but primarily I am the founder and CEO of World Extreme Medicine, and the annual WEM Conference. I also founded the MSc in Extreme Medicine at the University of Exeter and Graduate Certificate program at Bouvré College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston.
I spent several years running remote boat operations, initially for Noble Caledonia. Then extensively for Lindblad - National Geographic Expeditions, based out of New York and travelling to Indonesia, the Seychelles, Madagascar, Antarctica, Arctic and around the British Isles, plus mountain guiding and expedition leading in Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, and various other places. I was then asked to set up an expedition company, and Across the Divide Expeditions (ATD) was born.
ATD was quickly asked by Capital Radio and Mencap if we could organise some charity challenges for them and little did I know what an incredible journey that would take on planning expeditions to locations as diverse as China, Peru, Namibia, Australia, the high Arctic and Madagascar. ATD organised over seventy expeditions a year at its peak, and we facilitated the raising of over £103 million for a wide range of charities, from Cancer Research and Doctors without Borders to the Scott Polar Institute and Battersea Dogs Home! If you are UK-based you will have seen ATD on TV in various guises without realising. We ran well recognised events such as the Children in Need Rickshaw Challenge which raised over £25 million all by itself!
One of ATD's founding tenets was that every expedition would have an experienced medic accompany them. To my knowledge, we were the first company in the world to actually pay our medics, equip them with a peer-reviewed medical kit, and provide an internal multi-day training program to equip them for the rigours of expedition medicine.
The training program proved so successful that our medical team suggested we made a version that was publicly accessible to other medical professionals. When we did, to our surprise, seventy medical professionals turned up, and the 'Expedition and Wilderness Medicine' company was born. I focused on building a medical education platform as the time was right to reduce ATD down to spend more time with my young family.
We wanted to contribute to and build a community of practice, enable easier access, and break down the silos between medical disciplines approaching expedition and wilderness medicine with a collaborative mindset. So, we made a deliberate decision not to trademark our name, and it's heartening to see books, courses, and articles using this now well-established phrase.
You may ask why we changed the name to World Extreme Medicine – now a B-Corp accredited company? I noticed that our courses, expeditions, and conferences were attracting medics from all over the world and, interestingly, across the gamut of specialities: military medicine, paramedicine, humanitarian medicine, pre-hospital care, sports, disaster response, midwifery and aerospace medicine, to name just a few. I thought maybe we could build a community where professionals could share their experiences, learn from others, generate new research and create opportunities for each other; this epiphany gave rise to my new mission!
Ukraine, and Medics4Ukraine operations over there can variously take up a huge amount of time through working with Luca to organise convoys and training teams, monitoring in-country teams, and staying abreast of the security situation there. Making connections is part of my great joy and reaching out to people doing fascinating work is something that I find really rewarding.
Generating new ideas is not essential but it's an incredibly rewarding part of my role. I find spending time outdoors or working out to be vital in letting my mind unwind and flow, making connections that would otherwise not form if I was tied to a laptop. So, creating space during the day is important to me and I try to limit the amount of screen time.
Expeditions and remote travel have always featured massively in my life so planning my next trip, ideally with my grown-up kids, always forms a part of everyday life!
If I’m honest, I’m not good at detail, so I have to work hard to apply myself. I am a firm believer in collaborative working, and competition is good as it encourages innovation. So I find it frustrating to see empire building from organisations, and people building their own protective silos. Fortunately, I feel we are sufficiently well established now to counter any isolationist thinking in our field.
I love the constant variety. The creativity of pushing at the boundaries of medicine, working with incredible medical professionals from across the world and playing our part of making medicine in low resource areas better.
My work is endlessly engrossing and rewarding and attending events such as the WEM Conference are like being plugged-into-the-mains of inspiration, there is such positive energy in gathering so many incredible people together. The story is focused on who is speaking on the various stages but in truth the stories in the audience are equally engrossing! I get such a kick out of having the honour to do what I do.
If I had to give some advice, I’d say
‘just do it!’
I have four mantras or quotes that I repeat to myself when I am feeling challenged, dispirited or frustrated.
Mandela:
‘Everything seems impossible, until it is done’
Margaret Mead: ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has."
In my head when presented by pontification
‘Don’t give me rivers, give me bridges’.
And I love this quote from
Kennedy’s
speech at Rice University unveiling his Space ambitions
‘We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people’
In contrast, the best advice that I’ve ever received is to
‘Do more. Talk less!’
Looking forward, I’ll undoubtedly be planning for the next expedition or time with my family, and I keep my skills up to date by being passionate about what I do.
Finally, from my time as a remote and rescue boat operator, the one piece of kit I’d always recommend at sea is a knife to cut people free of rigging, lines and prevent the need for any medical intervention!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this guest blog, we certainly enjoyed putting it together with Mark.
If you’d like more information about WEM, please head over to
www.worldextrememedicine.com.
We can highly recommend signing up for newsletters and if you can make it to the conference in November, we hope to see you there!
You can also connect with Mark via his Linkedin profile -
www.linkedin.com/in/profmarkhannaford