Abington Hospital Doc Among World's 50 Greatest Leaders: Fortune

ABINGTON, PA — A Montgomery County surgeon has drawn national recognition for her outstanding work during the pandemic in supporting communities of color.

Abington Hospital's Dr. Ala Stanford was recently named to Fortune Magazine's World's 50 Greatest Leaders. She came in at 23rd on the list.

The Consortium was launched near the start of the pandemic, as Stanford relates to Fortune.

"The majority of the testing sites were in affluent white neighborhoods,” Stanford told the outlet. “There was no testing in the communities where people were dying the most. So we created it.”

With a rented van and protective gear from the hospital, Stanford went out into the community and starting conducting tests in underserved neighborhoods.

In time, this turned into a much larger effort that also involved improving vaccine access and equity. Check out what Fortune has to say about the project:

"This year, as Philadelphia and its home state struggled to equitably distribute its vaccine supply, Stanford’s organization held walk-up vaccination clinics in locations convenient for the city’s Black residents, who account for 44% of the population. By restricting vaccines to people who lived in specific zip codes, the consortium circumvented some of the equity problems (and vaccine-rollout red tape) plaguing Fortune 500 pharmacy chains like Rite Aid, which saw white suburbanites driving into Philadelphia to (legally) take the majority of its available vaccines."

The list took leaders from across fields and included figures as diverse as Stacy Abrams, Tom Brady, and Guy Fieri. New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern topped the list.

Read the full profile on Stanford and see the rest of Fortune's list online here.