Dr. Jeffrey Mapp of Extra Mile Pediatrics with a young patient in El Salvador
In Blanchard’s coffee shop on Broad Street, Dr. Jeffrey Mapp is supervising a speech therapy appointment for a 7-year-old child in Guatemala. On his computer screen are an interpreter, a speech therapist based in the United States, and Bella, a young girl who hasn’t been attending school because of her speech impediment.
Mapp, 44, and his wife Kimball, a pediatric nurse, are the co-founders of Extra Mile Pediatrics, a Richmond-based nonprofit that travels to communities like Bella’s in Guatemala and El Salvador to provide general medical care for underserved children.
Extra Mile medical teams are made up entirely of volunteers — not just doctors and nurses, but nonmedical team members who come from across the U.S., connected by social media and word of mouth. During a weeklong visit, each 15-person team will see and treat more than 400 children.
The organization’s goal is to create self-sustaining health care networks that extend beyond visits — hence this impromptu Zoom therapy session.
The seeds of Extra Mile were planted in 1999. As a 20-year-old Hampden-Sydney College student, Mapp traveled to Guatemala with a medical mission group. “That trip changed the trajectory of my life,” he says. “All my work since then has been through that lens — the understanding that not everyone has the same access to medical care that many take for granted.”
After graduating from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in 2005, Mapp worked as a physician at Pediatric Associates of Richmond. In 2018, he and Kimball founded Extra Mile, organizing their first trips while still working full time. At the end of 2022, he left the practice to focus entirely on Extra Mile.
“It was a leap of faith to leave my job; I’m still scared,” Mapp says, “but I knew Extra Mile was having an impact, and I just needed the opportunity to give more.”
Two things set Extra Mile apart from other medical nonprofits: first, a dedicated focus on pediatrics, particularly preventive care (what might be called “well visits” at Mapp’s former practice), and second, a commitment to returning consistently to the same locations and families at least once every six months, building sustainable networks for long-term health.
Extra Mile volunteers work with children in Guatemala.
“To serve these communities best, I realized you’ve got to do things differently,” Mapp says. “There aren’t a lot of groups like ours that provide pediatric care exclusively. We feel it’s important to see everyone, not just sick kids. So much of what you do in pediatrics is about growth and development over time.”
That consistency builds trust with patients — and with parents. “Parents in these areas don’t have the opportunity to ask doctors, ‘Is my child developing the right way? Is this OK?’ the way people in Richmond might,” Mapp says. “That reassurance and focusing on preventative health can have a huge impact on a child’s life.”
Almost all the communities where Extra Mile works have very poor water quality, no plumbing or sanitation infrastructure, and extremely limited access to health care. Most are rural, such as Guatemala’s salt-mining and coffee-harvesting communities, while in some areas most of Extra Mile’s patients work in the tourism service industry.
Extra Mile treats all its patients with antiparasitic medicine as a matter of course and often partners with nonprofit water services to set up village filtration systems. If patients need complicated surgeries or specialized care, the organization will find the necessary experts.
In late 2022, Extra Mile began to organize speech pathology services and vision screenings. The team prepacks a variety of different eyeglass prescriptions, then uses a portable machine to determine the right prescription. “If a kid is complaining about lots of headaches and fuzzy vision, a pair of glasses can be a life-changer, especially in school,” Mapp says.
Currently, about 60 Extra Mile volunteers travel to one of three communities in Guatemala or five in El Salvador that the group serves — with more locations to come. A board provides oversight and direction, but the only full-time staff member is Mapp, who does not draw a salary. Volunteers are asked to raise their own travel costs, while the group’s fundraising efforts pay for supplies and overhead.
Mapp makes an important point about Extra Mile’s work: The goal is not to be the primary pediatric care in these communities. Instead, he says that within five to 10 years of starting to visit an area, Extra Mile aims to teach families about preventive care and build a network of local doctors who are a reliable source of health care for everyone there — enough that the community no longer needs the help of Extra Mile volunteers.
“On my last trip to El Salvador, I looked around the clinic and saw kids getting dental screens, vaccines, seeing doctors,” Mapp says. “It was really amazing — a comprehensive partnership between all these groups. I thought, ‘We’re building something that will last after we’re gone.’ ”
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