AfS History
Alliance for Smiles (AfS) was founded in October of 2004 by five members of the Rotary Club of San Francisco who had been involved for ten years previously with cleft lip and palate reconstructive surgery. The desire on the part of the Founders was to create a two tiered program that not only send medical teams to sites to perform free reconstructive surgery but to also create Treatment Centers where the protocol of cleft treatment found in Center in the United States could be replicated.
The five Alliance for Smiles founders (from Left to Right): Jim Deitz, Anita Stangl, James Patrick, John Goings & John Uth.
AfS decided to choose China as the first country to be approached with this dual concept. Several factors contributed to this choice: the need for treatment (one in 350 children being born annually with the cleft anomaly), pre-existing relationships with the China Population Welfare Foundation and the State Family Planning Commission to facilitate logistics, and an infra-structure that could be used to set up Treatment Centers. There was also an intense interest by the Chinese to learn about Treatment Centers and establish them at sites.
