The Kansas City Star
With help of Lviv-born doctor, KC hospital, nonprofit partner to ship supplies to Ukraine
Anna Grodzinsky watched anxiously from Kansas City when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. Her aunt and 96-year-old grandmother were hunkered down in their central Lviv home.
Many sleepless nights followed as Grodzinsky, a cardiologist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, watched how war affected access to fresh food, affordable medications and preventative healthcare services in the country where she was born.
It’s why she’s volunteering Saturday with Project C.U.R.E., a non-profit partnered with Saint Luke’s Health System, to send more advanced medical supplies to the people of Ukraine.
“They’re obviously scared. They’re concerned. They can’t wait for things to normalize,” she said. “But they are not optimistic that that will happen anytime soon. So they’re trying to move on pragmatically.”
When war broke out, Grodzinsky sent her grandmother small items like arthritis cream.
With Project C.U.R.E. she’ll help send more than 200 kits donated by the hospital and packed with medical supplies such as dressings, syringes and wound care materials all valued at more than $200,000.
Grodzinsky was born in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. She emigrated with her parents to the United States in 1990 at the age of six.
They landed in Columbia as refugees where a community organization based out of the University of Missouri helped support her family’s resettlement. Her father became a nurse and her mother completed a master’s in health administration at Mizzou before they relocated to Kansas City in 1997.
Grodzinsky has been back to Ukraine four times since she was a child, most recently in April 2019, when Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine. Her quiet hometown city of Lviv was gaining ground as a tourist destination in eastern Europe.
“At that time, the Ukraine was becoming a bit more Western-leaning, it was becoming a bit more tech savvy, and there were advances that we saw as positives,” she said.
When Russian forces invaded on February 24, she held her breath as the city was turned upside down.
Grodzinsky, whose research includes helping pregnant patients with heart conditions, watched as women in labor ran for cover as bombs tore through Ukrainian hospitals.
She followed news coverage as one of the bombs that struck Lviv landed just a mile from the apartment where she was born and read a New York Times story about a gravely ill boy named Arthur who was fleeing to the border with his mother. He shares a name with Grodzinsky’s own son.
“It hits a nerve when you see the area where you were born under attack,” she said. “I just can’t.”
Grodzinsky got to work fundraising in preparation for a drawn-out crisis both for those fleeing and those staying. She also took in a family friend who fled Lviv.
She said it’s been incredible to see her colleagues contribute monetarily to support not only her immediate family there, which is “extremely touching,” but also the greater refugee crisis at large. She’s written thank yous to everyone she knows who’s lent support. They total 35 so far.
It’s a sign that while Ukrainian lives have been in limbo for nearly three months, fatigue from those eager to help in Kansas City hasn’t set in.
“I’m hopeful that it’s a sign of much-needed solidarity,” Grodzinsky said, later adding: “It’s important for us to do all we can to support Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty, because it’s such an important channel and such an important buffer.”
How to help Project C.U.R.E
Project C.U.R.E. is a nonprofit that ships medical supplies and equipment to more than 135 developing countries around the world, said Kristin Robinson, Executive Director for the Kansas City location.
The organization has worked in Ukraine with partners for more than a decade. Since the war began, those partners have helped shi Project C.U.R.E.’s shipments to Poland, before crossing the border into Ukraine.
The Kansas City distribution location, which opened in June 2020, is always in need of volunteers to help prepare shipments out of their KC warehouse facility, Robinson said.
“People feel like they want to do something but they don’t know what they can do that makes a difference,” Robinson said. “And so we love just being an option to to really make a difference on the ground.”
She said they’re excited Grodzinsky will be among those lending a hand.
Those interested in volunteering can sign up through projectcure.org/about/location/kansas-city/.