Stan Brock Remembered Being Far From a Doctor and Built Remote Area Medical

Stan Brock was born in Preston, Lancashire, England. As a young man he went to British Guiana, now Guyana, and according to Remote Area Medical he managed the Dadanawa ranch there from 1952 to 1968. The ranch covered about 4,000 square miles of savannah and rainforest in a part of the country with very little infrastructure.

He lived and worked among the Wapishana people, and that experience shaped the rest of his life.

While working in Guyana, Brock was seriously injured in a fall from a horse. Remote Area Medical says he was 26 days away from the nearest medical care. He saw firsthand what it meant for an injury or illness to happen where no doctor could reach you, and he saw that his Wapishana neighbors lived with that reality all the time.

The memory stayed with him long after he left the ranch.

In 1968 Brock became a co-host of NBC's Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, an Emmy-winning wildlife series that, by RAM's account, reached more than 32 million viewers a week. He could have stayed in that world.

Instead, in 1985, he founded Remote Area Medical. RAM describes his own explanation of it in a few words: the organization was the way he kept a promise, because, as he put it, there are Wapishanas everywhere. He meant that people cut off from care were not only in the rainforest.

At first, RAM worked in underserved areas of developing countries, including Guyana, Mexico, and Haiti, according to WBIR in Knoxville. Brock then came to see that many Americans also lived far from affordable care.

On May 9, 1992, RAM held its first clinic in the United States, in Sneedville, Tennessee, a small Appalachian community that, WBIR reported, had recently lost its hospital and dental services. The model was simple to describe and hard to carry out: bring volunteer professionals to one place and offer dental care, eye exams and glasses, and general medical care at no cost. RAM says no insurance is required.

RAM ran on volunteers. Brock himself served as founder and president without compensation until his death. WBIR reported that he gave his own Social Security checks to the work every month. He put his own income back into the mission.

Brock did not do this alone, and RAM's reach grew because thousands of medical professionals and community volunteers chose to give their time.

Stan Brock died on August 29, 2018, in Rockford, Tennessee, at age 82, after 33 years leading RAM. By then, according to WBIR, the organization was running more than 70 clinics a year.

He was named a CNN Hero in 2012 and received the Lions International Humanitarian Award in 2017. RAM states its purpose as preventing pain and alleviating suffering by providing free, quality health care to those in need. The need remains larger than any one clinic: RAM notes that time limits often mean patients must choose between dental and vision care on a single visit. Remote Area Medical continues under new leadership and reports that, through 2024, nearly 230,000 volunteers had helped treat more than 977,000 people, providing over $215 million in free care.