In 2012, William Schecter, MD initiated a project to improve access to high quality surgical care in developing countries under the auspices of the Pacific Coast Surgical Association (PCSA)

That project grew into The Alliance for Global Clinical Training (AGCT), co-founded by Dr. Schecter, Paul Hofmann, DrPH and Douglas Grey, M.D., who together previously co-founded two other non-profit organizations dedicated to improving health care delivery:

Operation Access (1992), which mobilizes medical volunteers in the United States to provide diagnostic and surgical procedures to low-income, uninsured patients at no cost.

 MedShare West (2008), which gathers, sorts, and ships open unused medical supplies and used medical equipment from US hospitals to partner medical facilities in developing countries or with medical mission teams.

AGCT now includes volunteer surgical faculty and residents from several US teaching hospitals, including UC San Francisco, UC Davis, and the Oregon Health and Science University, as well as Israeli teaching institutions, to provide continuous educational support to colleagues in Tanzania.