Jlo’s Panamanian project

And while Outliers is on the subject of divas … there’s JLo. Actress, dancer, pop star, TV hostess and producer, cosmetics and automobile spokesmodel, clothing- and perfume-line entrepreneur, pro-football team investor and philanthropist. Whew, Jennifer Lopez does a lot. Now, La Lopez has launched a world singing tour in Panama City this month and a telemedicine project connecting hospitals and clinics in Panama.

The Los Angeles-based Lopez Family Foundation, which Lopez co-founded with her sister Lydia, will be funding the project to deliver “state-of-the-art digital diagnosis and video-conferencing technology” to several hospitals and a string of health centers in Panama, according to a news release.

The Panama project benefits from experiences JLo’s foundation gained from a previous telehealth program started in 2010 in Puerto Rico, the founders’ parents’ home. Back then, it was known as the Maribel Foundation, named for the late sister of JLo’s estranged-husband, salsa singer and actor Marc Anthony, also of Puerto Rican descent. The two have been separated for nearly a year and have divorce proceedings under way.

By partnering with Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, with which Lopez has had an even longer philanthropic relationship, the new telemedicine initiative “will enable medical professionals within Panama to seek diagnosis and consultation opportunities between the program’s medical centers and the pediatric specialists at CHLA,” the foundation said in a news release.

The project will link Hospital del Nino with the Hospital of Pediatric Specialties, both in Panama City; and with Hospital Obaldia in David, the nation’s third-largest city, near the western border with Costa Rica; as well as improve an existing network of videophone links between a rural hospital in San Felix and three rural health clinics it serves, according to the statement.