Heart of a Giant Foundation (HGF) is a community health organization rooted in Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury. Our work began with one man’s lived experience and grew into a team, a board, a network of sites, and a body of evidence.
Every screening is free. No insurance, no paperwork, no cost, ever. When we talk about earning our own revenue, that comes from institutions, not from the people who walk in for a screening.
In 2012, Bouba Diemé was 26 years old, living in South Africa, newly in love, full of plans. Then came the chest pain. The flu-like symptoms that would not leave. The diagnosis: left ventricular non-compaction cardiomyopathy, a rare congenital heart defect. His heart was too big. It was working too hard. It would only get worse.
Medication helped for a while. Then it didn’t.
In 2017, surgeons implanted an LVAD, a mechanical heart pump, into his chest. For nearly six years, Bouba plugged it into the wall every night to charge. He lived with it every hour of every day. He moved to Boston. He got married. He became a father. He built a life around a machine keeping him alive while he waited for a heart that fit his frame. At 6′8″, the wait was long.
On a Friday afternoon in October 2022, the call came. He received his transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. One of the photographs taken afterward shows one of his sons listening to his new heart through a stethoscope.
“I think our journey to the transplant is really what defined our next step.”
Bouba Diemé
That next step was Heart of a Giant Foundation.
What Bouba lived through taught him something specific. The people who made it through were not necessarily the sickest or the strongest. They were the ones with someone in their corner.
“The relationships, the social capital, that I've enjoyed since birth is literally the reason I'm still alive.”
Bouba Diemé, Vital Connections, 2024
Health systems are built to treat illness. They are not built to sit with someone while they process a frightening number, call to check in three weeks later, or explain a diagnosis in Kreyòl ayisyen on a Tuesday afternoon. That is not a failure. It is a design reality. HGF was built to fill that space.
“My goal is to use my lived experience to help eliminate preventable harm and improve the management of chronic health conditions in our communities.”
Bouba Diemé
Heart of a Giant was built to be that person. At scale. In the neighborhoods where it matters most.
Heart of a Giant Foundation is a community health organization rooted in Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury, working across Greater Boston. We are not a clinic. We work alongside clinics, health centers, and hospitals to make sure more people find their doctor, understand their health, and stay well over time.
We do this through two connected efforts.
Our direct service work: free cardiometabolic screenings, blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring, health education, and care coordination. Community health workers who live in the neighborhoods they serve, who speak the languages of the people they sit with, and who follow up because they know continuity is what actually changes outcomes.
How we learn from what we do. We track outcomes, generate community-driven evidence, and bring that knowledge into clinical and research partnerships, so that what we learn in Mattapan reaches decision-makers who can act on it.
The dose-response is real. Participants who visit once see meaningful improvement. Participants who visit six to nine times see blood pressure improvement in 74% of cases. Showing up, consistently, in the same neighborhoods, with the same faces, changes outcomes.
Cardiometabolic screenings and health education sessions across Greater Boston between 2023 and 2025.
Hypertensive crises caught and connected to care before something worse happens. Twenty-two of them in 2025 alone.
Most people who come six to nine times see their blood pressure improve. Seventy-four percent of them.
“HGF is filling a gap our system has never been designed to close. These aren't just screenings. They are sustained relationships between community members and trusted health advocates. The clinical outcomes are remarkable.”
Dr. Emefah Loccoh, MD, Cardiologist, Brigham and Women's Hospital, HGF Board Member
It is not a slogan. It is the reason our health coaches are neighbors, not strangers. It is the reason we measure success by whether people come back. It is the reason this work started with one man’s lived experience and grew into a team, a board, a network of sites, and a body of evidence.
Your health is not yours alone to carry. Neither is the work of protecting it.
Heart of a Giant is led by Bouba Diemé, Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer, and governed by a clinical and governance board that includes cardiologists, public health leaders, and community practitioners from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Boston Medical Center.
Our community health workers are the foundation. They are nurses, pharmacists, certified medical assistants, and community members with deep roots in the neighborhoods they serve. They speak English, Spanish, Kreyòl ayisyen, Kriolu, and Vietnamese.
We are expanding our direct service reach, launching remote patient monitoring for participants with the greatest need, and building the earned revenue partnerships that will sustain this work for decades. The goal is a Greater Boston where your zip code does not determine whether anyone shows up for your health.
We are looking for health systems, funders, and community partners who understand that clinical excellence and community trust are not separate goals. They reinforce each other. HGF is where that reinforcement happens.
One door, ready for you whenever you are.
