Paul Hudson Photo

Paul Hudson

MD, MPH

Paul Hudson (MD, MPH, FACP) was trained as a physician at Johns Hopkins and an epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control. He and his family served with SIM as medical missionaries in Ethiopia, Nepal, and Thailand over three decades. He has done clinical medicine, community health, and HIV and AIDS, with a heart for discipleship. Paul has served in SIM International leadership. He has been SIM’s point person for healthcare ministries for many years, leading a team to shape and support SIM’s healthcare missionaries. He and his wife live in the United States near Charlotte, North Carolina. Check out pauljhudson.com.

Flourishing by Design: Imagining Medical Missions for 2040

Our predecessors faithfully built institutions that have served for generations. Our challenge is different. We have inherited those institutions into a world they could scarcely have imagined. Population growth, urbanization, changing disease patterns, financial pressures, conflict, climate shocks, and technological change are reshaping healthcare across low- and middle-income countries.

Drawing on new data about the Christian health ecosystem, strategic consultations with global and African Christian health leaders, and field experience across Africa and Asia, this session explores what it will take for Christian health ministries to flourish by 2040.

Together we’ll imagine what it will take for Christian health ministries to flourish by 2040, strengthening resilient institutions, cultivating exceptional local leadership, and mobilizing a broader range of Christian expertise from medicine and nursing to governance, education, engineering, finance, data science, and technology.

How can Christian health ministries become indispensable partners in building resilient health systems that reflect the compassion and hope of Christ? The legacy of the next generation of medical missions will be measured not only by the number of missionaries sent, but by the resilience, flourishing, and Christ-centered witness of systems they strengthen.