https://healex.org/blog daily 0.75 2026-10-02 https://healex.org/blog/this-is-why-we-show-up monthly 0.5 2026-07-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6982485ee2d03f0b3cb7ba9b/8ed50130-5827-4133-94b2-f87826bb94f1/DR+Trip+-+Spring+26+-+3.jpeg Blog - This Is Why We Show Up - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6982485ee2d03f0b3cb7ba9b/006537bf-df23-49b2-ac0b-961f73cc110a/DR+Trip+-+Spring+26+-+2.jpeg Blog - This Is Why We Show Up - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://healex.org/blog/Blog Post Title One-3zaa9-zlxng-cfm4a monthly 0.5 2026-04-13 https://healex.org/blog/blog-post-title-two-t5my5-k4xmd-sk5ee monthly 0.5 2026-04-13 https://healex.org/blog/blog-post-title-three-y3peb-4lwnz-krt64 monthly 0.5 2026-04-13 https://healex.org/blog/tag/Stories monthly 0.5 https://healex.org/founders-journal daily 0.75 2026-10-03 https://healex.org/founders-journal/founders-journal-an-introduction monthly 0.5 2026-10-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6982485ee2d03f0b3cb7ba9b/6ddbedb6-189c-421e-afe0-8d8a948fd3da/Matt%27s+Headshot.jpeg Founder's Journal - Founder's Journal: An Introduction Why I'm starting this journal My name is Drew. I'm the founder and CEO of HealEx, and for most of the last decade, I've been caring for people at the intersection of exploitation and healing. Most of that work happens in a mobile clinic. I've cleaned and stitched wounds, listened to people describe lives shaped by poverty, addiction, violence, and trafficking, and helped people learn to trust again. Those moments taught me something I didn't learn in any classroom: people rarely heal because someone rescues them. They heal because someone keeps showing up. How HealEx began HealEx grew slowly and on purpose. My career began in Haiti, doing community health work and running mobile clinics. Over the next several years, that work took me to the United States, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Dominican Republic. Everything I learned along the way shaped HealEx into a model built for people who are actively being exploited, people who often avoid traditional healthcare because it has hurt or judged them before. Our flagship program in Salt Lake City launched in 2018. Our team meets people where they are: on the street, in online escorting, in strip clubs. We provide trauma-focused medical and mental healthcare, visit after visit, until people feel safe enough to talk about what is really happening. In 2022 we returned to the Dominican Republic, this time to the largest red-light district in the Caribbean, where many of our patients are Haitian refugees. We've also helped partners build care programs for exploited women in India, and trained healthcare workers across Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. One of the moments that stays with me happened in India's Sundarbans. I sat on a bed in a dimly lit hut in a remote marshland, caring for women who earn a living wading through muddy rivers. I was reminded how the will to survive can leave people vulnerable to exploitation. And I was reminded that much of this work is simply sitting with someone and listening. What the Founder's Journal is This journal is where I'll share those moments. Each entry starts with a photograph from the field, asks a question it raised for me, and offers a short reflection. Some questions will be clinical. Some will be about trauma, addiction, displacement or global health. Many won't have neat answers. That's the point. The intersection of exploitation and healing is complicated, and I'd rather think through it honestly with you than pretend it's simple. Who this is for I'm writing for people working against trafficking, people working in healthcare, and anyone in the social impact space trying to do good work well. I'm also writing for anyone who simply wants to understand this world a little better. If something here gives you a new way of seeing exploitation and healing, I hope you'll stay with us. Read along, share what resonates, and if you want to go further, come find out how you can be part of HealEx. Thanks for being here. Drew https://healex.org/founders-journal/what-does-exploitation-look-like monthly 0.5 2026-10-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6982485ee2d03f0b3cb7ba9b/4c752dba-ba6f-43d4-b2f9-f25704782886/WhatsApp+Image+2026-10-02+at+11.48.00+AM.jpeg Founder's Journal - What Does Exploitation Look Like? - I took this photograph near a market in India. This girl was moving through the crowd selling roses. She was very dirty, and it was clear she was living on the street. When I asked, she let me take her picture. Afterward, I spent a long time reading about begging and other coercive ways children are made to earn money on the streets in India. What I found is that it is common for children without a stable home to be used this way: sent out to beg, or to put on a face for tourists and wealthy passersby, with the money flowing back to a larger begging ring. I can't know this girl's story for certain. But everything I saw that day fit that pattern, and I'm confident she was part of it. That moment changed how I understood exploitation. At the time, I had been working almost entirely with people experiencing sexual exploitation, and I think I had quietly let that define the word for me. Standing in that street, I saw it more clearly. Exploitation means someone is being taken advantage of, at their own expense, in a way that damages them and leaves trauma behind. It doesn't need a brothel or a work camp to be real. When most people hear "human trafficking," they picture sex trafficking or forced labor. Those are real and serious. But exploitation can also look much more ordinary, like a child selling flowers to strangers while someone else keeps the money. When I look at this photograph, I think about her. I wonder what her days are like, who she answers to at night, and what it costs her to keep showing up on that street. And I think about all the other situations people end up in that are exploitative, traumatic and damaging, but that we don't always recognize, because they don't match the picture in our heads. She taught me that exploitation rarely looks the way we expect it to. Sometimes it looks like a little girl holding out a rose, hoping someone will buy one. Learning to see that is where healing can begin. - Drew https://healex.org/founders-journal/what-does-therapeutic-access-look-like monthly 0.5 2026-10-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6982485ee2d03f0b3cb7ba9b/8d54693d-94c1-4430-8f36-460045ef00a3/WhatsApp+Image+2026-10-02+at+11.51.22+AM+%281%29.jpeg Founder's Journal - What Does Therapeutic Access Look Like? - I took this photograph in downtown Salt Lake City, where many people are living with homelessness and substance use. She was 18 at the time. It was the middle of summer, and she'd had a bad cough for several weeks that kept getting worse. She was smoking a lot of fentanyl then, and she was pretty sick. So we did an ultrasound of her lungs on the spot to check for pneumonia. An ultrasound like that takes a few minutes. Whenever I'm doing an ultrasound or cleaning a wound or anything else that takes a little time, I talk with the person in front of me. I ask about their life, their story, and how they got to where they are now. Often that opens a door. People start talking candidly about their lives, and for a little while they feel heard, seen, and understood. To me, that's what therapeutic access is. It means bringing a healing experience to someone where they are, and inviting them into it. Medical care is the reason we meet. But the conversation that happens during that care is often where healing starts. T hat conversation can happen after treatment, but it can also happen during it. For people who are being exploited, who often have good reasons not to trust healthcare, that combination is powerful. It gives them a reason to come back, and a reason to keep engaging in their own healing. - Drew https://healex.org/founders-journal/gbksf5d6ye1kbty9whbreus6sv029p monthly 0.5 2026-10-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6982485ee2d03f0b3cb7ba9b/1791052390150-HXX7K5N6TD50GRSX5GK5/WhatsApp+Image+2026-10-02+at+11.26.02+AM.jpeg Founder's Journal - What makes someone vulnerable to exploitation? - I was sitting in a small church, taking care of patients in a small Haitian community in the Dominican Republic. I saw this child standing in the doorway, waiting to be seen for a respiratory infection. I feel like my understanding of vulnerability has evolved over the last 12 years. Certainly being a child makes you more vulnerable to being taken advantage of. But there is so much more to it. Like this kiddo is essentially a refugee seeking a better life in a country that wants to deport him and his family. He is experiencing extreme poverty. Poor access to needed things like healthcare. 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