MCI is leading the way in shifting the intellectual paradigm of public health to one that is more oriented towards the possibilities of human networks and human behavioral change. Instead of focusing on top-down “sick care,” they’re shifting the paradigm to bottom-up “well care.” Rather than exclusively focusing on individuals and the biology of diseases, MCI is focusing on collective networks and the sociology of behaviorally-driven epidemics. By partnering with local organizations to create “microclinics,” or networks of people building a human infrastructure of supportive healthcare in their homes and through their communities, MCI is trying to stop diseases before they become epidemics.

MCI is committed to rigorously evaluating their projects with the aim of enhancing their effectiveness and success while also disseminating their findings to other partners who share their mission of combating chronic disease in under-resourced areas around the world. Using sophisticated cohort studies and randomized controlled trials in partnership with universities such as the Harvard School of Public Health and UCSF, MCI has demonstrated the effectiveness of the microclinic model through statistically significant improvements in participant health indicators across various chronic diseases.

For example, in a sample of 720 individuals who participated in a four-month microclinic program in Jordan to address type II diabetes, MCI observed significant decreases in BMI and HbA1c. Preliminary research findings in Kentucky and Kenya also showed similar successes in the microclinic approach. MCI’s research and experience has demonstrated that health is indeed contagious across social networks, communities, and nations

MCI continuously evaluates the “Microclinic Social Network Model” using similar experimental randomized controlled trial (RCT) methods to those used by 2019 Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer. They deployed this method in three impoverished communities in Jordan, Kenya, and rural Appalachia. Their trials accomplished something that has, to their knowledge, never been done before: they identified causal social network forces that improve blood pressure, weight, and blood sugar, and sustained these improvements in the long-term. These studies made significant strides in cracking the code of behavior change, solidifying that more, not less, socialization can make a person healthier, especially when synergistically combined with education.

A series of community-based workshops with trained facilitators equips each microclinic with practical skills and a system of reliable support needed to transform the social and economic determinants of these deadly diseases in their own networks of family and friends. Throughout the training process, microclinics create a robust information dissemination system that can be readily tapped by local and international organizations to effectively coordinate successive trainings and build local capacity.

MCI has shared their model widely, by contributing substantially to the scientific literature (over 20 peer-reviewed studies have emerged from their projects), by communicating with the media, and by sharing their insights with large major health care payers, providers, and foundations. They offer global public health institutions that wish to adopt their model a free license to use their materials for non-profit purposes. MCI has also scaled their model with national and regional health payers (insurers) and providers (health systems) to reach over ten million people with life-saving programming.