The 2023 Bangladesh Innovation Award, hosted by the Bangladesh Innovation Conclave in collaboration with A2I, Cabinet Division, ICT Division & UNDP, recognized TraumaLink as the “Best Innovation-Healthcare”. Mr. Zunaid Ahmed Palak, MP, Honorable State Minister, ICT Division, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh was the honorable Chief Guest in this award ceremony. We felt honored to be chosen after a rigorous vetting process focused on the competing organizations’ merits with specific attention to expertise within their field, dedication to service, and a commitment to promoting excellence.

In partnership with the World Health Organization, Bangladesh and the Directorate General of Health Services, TraumaLink has successfully completed the development of the operational protocols and training manual for post-crash response for the victims of road traffic injuries in Bangladesh.

A Technical Committee Meeting on Post-Crash Response was held on 23 October 2022 to provide final approval for these materials. Dr. Baqi presented the second draft of the ‘Protocols and Training Manual for the post-crash response in Bangladesh’. The members of the Technical Committee included distinguished representatives from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, DGHS, NITOR, Highway Police, Fire Service & Civil Defense, BRTA, ARI-BUET, WHO, BRAC, & CIPRB. The protocols and training manual received unanimous approval from the committee.

Along with co-author Susan Madden, Jon and Arup published the first peer-reviewed journal article on TraumaLink in “Global Health: Science and Practice”.

“TraumaLink: A Community-Based First Responder System for Traffic Injury Victims in Bangladesh” introduces the TraumaLink service model and the impressive results of our first six years of operations: https://www.ghspjournal.org/…/2022/07/27/GHSP-D-21-00537

The paper highlights the numerous successes of TraumaLink, including the strong and consistent support we have received from all of the communities we serve, our high volunteer recruitment and retention rates, the 100% incident response rate, rapid crash scene response times, and fast and reliable transportation of injured victims to the hospital.

TraumaLink has streamlined and augmented the process of mobilizing and organizing prehospital resources for traffic injury victims, and the successes of the model suggest that it should be rolled out on a national scale in Bangladesh and adapted for other developing countries facing similar challenges on their roads.

On 5 February 2020 TraumaLink hosted a daylong event at the National Press Club, highlighting our first five years of operations. This was organized to celebrate the work of the Volunteer First Responders, raise awareness about TraumaLink’s activities, and advocate for a broader expansion of the service in Bangladesh.

The Chief Guests were Dr. Hasan Mahmud, MP, Honorable Minister, Ministry of Information, and Lt Col. Zillur Rahman, PSC, Director (Operation & Maintenance), Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence. The Special Guests for the event included distinguished representatives from MOH&FW, DGHS, BRTA, DMP, RHD, Nirapad Sarak Chai, WHO, ARI-BUET, CRP, UNDP, and the Bangladesh Society of Emergency Medicine.

In January 2020 a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Non-Communicable Disease Control (NCDC) program of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) and TraumaLink to facilitate post-crash care for road traffic injury victims in Bangladesh. From now on, TraumaLink will support the government’s efforts by working in close collaboration with the NCDC Program of DGHS to expand post-crash management more broadly, whereas DGHS will provide necessary technical support to TraumaLink.

TraumaLink was among a select group of grantees chosen by USAID Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) to take part in the Growth Readiness Assessment and Coaching project. This year-long program was headed up by the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University, in partnership with coaches from We Scale Impact. For more than 15 years, CASE has been an academic and education center working with students and practitioners around the world on issues of scaling social impact and impact investing.

In the Fall 2019 edition of the Stanford Social innovation review, TraumaLink was recognized for its innovative community-based first responder system and its promise for improving pre hospital trauma care in other developing countries.

We were highly honored to be chosen as one of 6 laureates from a pool of 178 projects from all over the world. Mridul and Jon traveled to France to accept the award on behalf of TraumaLink on 2 July 2018. They also had the opportunity to discuss our lifesaving work at the conference, which was live-streamed to over 20 countries.

In June 2018 the Case-Based Teaching and Learning Initiative Team at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health published a teaching case about TraumaLink. The case is being widely used as a teaching tool at the Harvard Chan School and other educational institutions. It is being broadly distributed through the Harvard Business School Publishing case distribution system and the Initiative’s case resources web site, and is primarily available to other schools of public health.

In February 2017 TraumaLink received the first installment of a year-long USAID DIV Award for an expansion of its operations up to 100 km. We were highly honored to work with USAID and grateful for their generous support.

TraumaLink was proud to be a 2015 Manthan Award Winner for eHealth. We were chosen from among 412 applicants in 13 categories from across South Asia and the Asia Pacific Region. Mridul Chowdhury accepted the award on behalf of TraumaLink on the 3^rd of December 2015 at the Manthan Awards Gala in New Delhi, India.

More good news for TraumaLink with its second award in a month! This time we were chosen as semi-finalists in the MassChallenge Startup Accelerator, another encouraging step forward for us and our work.

In March 2014 TraumaLink was chosen as a semi-finalist for the competition, which was offered to students from all across Harvard University.