Elizabeth Sheehan was thumbing through Foreign Affairs magazine last year when an article and photo caught her eye. The story, headlined “The Global Health Burden,’’ addressed the failure to deliver rural health care in developing countries. The photo of a prototype clinic was intriguing. Sheehan peered more closely: Could it really be one of those ugly metal shipping containers that litter ports everywhere?
“It was my ‘aha!’ moment,’’ Sheehan says.
That was the birth of Containers2Clinics, a nonprofit that aims to recycle the metal boxes into clinics serving the poor in the developing world. Sheehan’s first “container-to-clinic’’ will be on display at the Institute of Contemporary Art at a launch party Nov. 16. “There are 20 million of them rotting all around the world,’’ Sheehan says. “They’re often just used once. Ten million children a year are dying of treatable illnesses because there’s no clinic, no doctor or nurse, no medication.’’
Sheehan, who lives in Dover with her two children and two dogs, is not the typical suburban soccer mom and do-gooder. Sure, her spacious home with its landscaped lawn overlooks the Charles River, and her living room is filled with art from her travels. But those travels were largely in developing countries, where she lived for many years. Now armed with a plan to turn metal boxes into medical bases, Sheehan believes she can radically improve health care in rural outposts where people have never seen a doctor or nurse.
Elizabeth Sheehan has a radical yet simple plan to bring health care to the Third World - The Boston Globe 
Elizabeth Sheehan has spent a long time working among the world’s poorest people. 
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