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2005 DGH Board Candidacy Statements

Annual elections for the DGH Board of Directors will be on held Saturday, August 6, 2005 during the 10th Annual General Assembly (see registration information). All DGH Voting Members are eligible to vote for new Board Members (see membership categories). If you are a Voting Member and will be unable to attend the General Assembly to vote in person, please consider voting by proxy. In order to vote by proxy, you should assign your vote to another Voting Member who will be present at the General Assembly by giving him/her a written and signed statement to that effect. You can use this proxy vote form (PDF) for that purpose.

You can tell your proxy your preferences among the candidates, but more candidates may be nominated at the Assembly. Each Voting Member can carry only one proxy. If you need assistance in identifying a Voting Member who will be attending the General Assembly, e-mail the DGH Registrar.

The following voting members have formally declared their candidacy:

Please read their statements below. Nominations for candidates may also be received on the floor at the election. Candidates must have been a voting member of DGH for at least one year and must have attended at least one DGH General Assembly prior to 2005.


Linnea Capps

I am a physician, currently on the board and working at Harlem Hospital and Columbia University in New York. I have worked with DGH for a number of years including volunteering in Chiapas, Mexico, starting in 1998. I have since been the project coordinator for our work in Mexico and have spent 2-3 months per year working Hospital San Carlos and supporting the health promoter training and the women's collective.

Before my work with DGH, I spent 2 years as a volunteer in El Salvador, training health promoters there during the civil war.

I am a physician trained in internal medicine and am currently the director of the internal medicine residency program at Harlem Hospital and an assistant clinical professor of medicine and public health at Columbia University.

I hope to continue as a member of the DGH Board and as coordinator of the Chiapas project. I also hope to use my academic role at Columbia to work to involve more students in DGH projects.


Irma Julieta Cruz Nava

My name is Irma Julieta Cruz Nava, I'm a physician, actually working in a Civil Association, Center of Studies and Prevention of Cancer, as director of Community Medicine, in Juchitan, Oaxaca.

I have known DGH since before its birth through being a participant in the formation process in El Salvador, where we intended to form a network of help and solidarity for the communiy projects in the country.

I joined DGH as an external member and I requested to be part of the active members on my last visit to the General Assembly in which I participated in 2002 (I am not certain of the year). My intention to be an active member was because I wanted to collaborate in a more direct way with the process of solidarity in the different projects of DGH and because I was working outside of the city of San Salvador, it was not possible for me to have fluid and continuous communication, although I always stayed in communication with different DGH members by e-mail.

What I have done directly for DGH has been to help the personal volunteers who visited El Salvador, coordinate with them to facilitate their activities in MDS (Medicos por el Derecho a la Salud) and coordinate activities with the volunteers in CDH (Campesinos en el Desarrollo Humano), all of this in Morazan. At the same time I helped the DGH members who visited El Salvador - Shirley Novak, Lanny Smith, Steve Miller, Jennifer Kasper, and others - in different ways. I have informed different people from the US about DGH and I have invited them to visit the DGH web page.

Actually, I am now situated outside of El Salvador, working in Mexico in a Civil Association and I want to help DGH in spreading the word about the work that they are carrying out, looking for new members to be integrated into the organization, looking for possible donations (if I am presented with the opportunity) and if it is possible to visit projects according to my possibilities.

By being a member of the board of directors of DGH, I want to participate in the growth of the organization, and in the strengthening of DGH. I consider that it is not necessary that I live there (In the US), and if I do not have problems with obtaining a visa, I will be present in the General Assemblies.


Sara Doorley

I initially became interested in Doctors for Global Health after receiving a global health action list serve through the American Medical Student Association in 2003. The email referred to the upcoming DGH conference in Berkely, California and included a few words on Liberation Medicine. Drawn in by this concept, I decided to fly out to California to learn a bit more about this professional organization that embodied and put into words the same philosophies that had been fueling me during medical school. It was at this conference in 2003, when I became so completely excited by DGH, by that which DGH represents, and by the opportunities that are provided by Doctors for Global Health that within one week of the conference I had dropped out of medical school (or taken a sabbatical depending on your perspective) to volunteer for 10 months in Santa Marta, El Salvador with DGH. During these 10 months, I had an incredible experience where I was able to integrate into a beautiful community, to learn a great deal about medicine, and to learn a greater amount about life. Upon return from El Salvador, I continued to be involved with Doctors for Global Health serving on the volunteer committee, contacting individuals during their midway point of the volunteer experience, and contacting all returning volunteers. I also helped to serve as a contact person for all individuals interested in volunteering for DGH in Santa Marta, El Salvador.

Although the overall time duration that I have been involved with DGH has been brief, I have been very fortunate in that I have been able to attend 3 DGH national assemblies to work in Santa Marta, El Salvador twice, to visit El Morazon once to be involved with the volunteer committee, and to attend a Board meeting in Syracuse as a volunteer representative. What I have to offer to DGH is my overall commitment to the organization. Throughout residency and the duration of my medical career (and life:-) I hope to continually evolve my relationship with DGH and to help assist DGH in the accomplishment of it's future goals. It would be a great honor and pleasure to serve as a board member of Doctors for Global Health.


Max Fischer

It's been a unique privilege staying involved in DGH throughout my medical and public health school journeys. I first got to know about DGH through Lanny when he spoke at an international health conference in 2000 that I helped to organize. I subsequently volunteered in India for a year at the Jamkhed Comprehensive Rural Health Project, which remains my most formative experience in medicine and public health; it has instilled in me a strong commitment to the empowerment of marginalized individuals and communities, and the promotion of human dignity. Even before I formally joined DGH, Lanny was both my financial advisor (i.e., don't let it stop you from pursuing this work) and my advocate (he got me linked into the People's Health Assembly 2000 in Bangladesh). It wasn't long before DGH became my portal for learning more about global health-from attending General Assemblies and local meetings to taking Spanish classes in Costa Rica and volunteering in El Salvador in 2002. I have learned from many mentors through DGH and its community partners-perhaps no more so than from the dozen young adults I worked with in Santa Marta to do community-based participatory research.

More recently, I've been involved in the planning process for this year's DGH General Assembly, as well as working with medical and surgical teams from Columbia University on developing partnerships with sites in the Dominican Republic. I have also had the opportunity to remain connected to the Jamkhed project, serving as a member of the selection committee for the Mabelle Arole Fellowship, which sends one promising premed candidate to Jamkhed every year. I look forward to working in Jamkhed again this spring as a medical and surgical sub-intern.

While I'm not anticipating a wide-open schedule as I start my residency in general surgery next July, I believe that I have the energy and focus to continue to volunteer with DGH, and I would be honored to serve if you elect me to the DGH Board. I am particularly interested in working with the Projects Committee, where my public health skills and my work experiences in India, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic may be most useful. My greatest concerns would be time limitations and an inflexible work schedule; however, I also have extensive informal experience with computer applications and financial accounting, and believe I could serve equally well in these functions. I appreciate your consideration of my candidacy!


Jonathan Kirsch

I want to be a member of the DGH Board of Directors because DGH encompasses much of what I believe health care should be and what health care providers should be doing. My first exposure to DGH was seeing Lanny Smith give a talk in Minneapolis, MN on Liberation Medicine in 1996. This talk helped liberate me from my medical school classes, which focused more on obscure facts than they did on human suffering, dignity, human rights, healthy economic development, or the impact of war and displacement on health. As a result, I organized a group of health professionals and students to visit Chiapas to volunteer and assess the health situation in a small village that had been attacked by the Mexican military in 1995. We visited and volunteered 3 years in a row, which was rewarding but not sustainable. I continued to volunteer in Chiapas as a physician and have spent 2 months at Hospital San Carlos with the help of DGH.

I've stayed involved with DGH by attending the General Assemblies and this winter I attended a Board meeting in Syracuse as an invited member. I also visited the DGH site in Morazan, El Salvador as a medical student.

I envision DGH as an organization that can both provide health care and health development to impoverished communities as well as inspire younger generations to get involved. If elected to the Board, I will bring experience of health care in Chiapas as well as working with migrant farmers in Upstate New York with the Finger Lakes Migrant Health Program. I see migrant health as part of global health and I will propose to host a local DGH site working with migrant farm workers.


Monica Sanchez

I have been privileged to have had the opportunity to be a part of Doctors for Global Health since before there was a Doctors for Global Health (DGH). I met many of the volunteers who worked in El Salvador on the project that led to the creation of DGH and did what I could to support the important work being done there. When the idea of DGH first germinated, I was asked to be on the Advisory Counsel and a couple of years after its creation I was elected to the Board of Directors. I created and still put out the DGH biannual newsletter, as well as the DGH web site.

This year marks the 10th Anniversary of DGH and it is hard for me to believe ten years have passed until I think about all that DGH has accomplished and all the communities DGH has helped during that time. I am proud of the work DGH has done and would like to continue to be a part of the Board of Directors as DGH steps into its second decade of existence.

DGH has matured a lot as an organization in the past ten years. It has laid a strong foundation from which to grow, reached more and more people around the world, and concretized its mission and principles as the guiding force behind its work. But growth brings a new set of challenges. In fact, we as a Board have debated whether we should grow, always mindful of a quote that warns, "Growth for growth's sake is the philosophy of the cancer cell." The answer we have come to is that growth is vital as the need is ever growing. As more and more communities ask DGH to accompany them, we either grow or learn to say no to all of them. We already have to say no to too many.

I want to continue to work to help DGH grow in a manageable way that keeps it true to its principles and to its commitment to putting the communities we accompany first. I also want to continue sharing in the growth we see in the communities we accompany.

As an all-volunteer organization, being on the Board of DGH has meant a lot of extracurricular work, of which my boss at my paying job (as Education Director of the Medicare Rights Center in New York City) is extremely jealous. And I have sometimes questioned whether I should or can keep doing it. But the satisfaction I get from doing it and from sharing with the people who make up this remarkable organization, far outweighs the "free" time I spend in front of my computer laying out the DGH newsletter, or making updates to the DGH web site, or reading progress reports, or on the phone for DGH committee and board conference calls, or at strategic planning and board meetings.

For these reasons I ask that you vote for me for another term on the DGH Board of Directors.


Marcelo Venegas-Pizarro

I have been an active DGH member since 2000. I joined upon meeting Lanny Smith during residency, and becoming very interested in the philosophy and work of DGH. I had worked in Guatemala for several months under a National Institutes of Health (NIH) scholarship during medical school, and had traveled on medical related solidarity trips to Cuba and Mexico. The international work done by DGH members was very appealing particularly since it wasn't based on charity as other health based relief organizations rather it contained the message of "accompaniment," "solidarity," and of "giving voice to the voiceless" without forgetting the need to have humility. The work of DGH members in El Salvador quickly became an inspiration. During medical residency, as a DGH member, we organized and staged several grass-roots endeavors in the South Bronx as well as DGH meetings with speakers both in Manhattan and the Bronx. The goal was to organize, to bring out community members to learn about health issues in a micro and macro-concept, to realize that their health like that of others in their neighborhood was being affected not just by the food they eat, but by their living conditions, their workplace, their social contacts. We managed to organize around the abuse of a little island by the name of Vieques by the U.S. military. We attempted to organize the medical residents and in the process we learned 'social medicine," which in itself is a paradox because all disease is "socially" based.

In January of 2003 I had the wonderful opportunity via DGH to support Salvadoran men, women and children in the town of San Agustin in Usulatan, San Salvador. A strong earthquake had besieged most of rural San Salvador, and decimated San Agustin. That experience confirmed my belief in humankind with such tremendous demonstrations of genuine love and affection from people who had lost the little they had. I will never forget the "material shock" I sensed upon returning to the U.S. airport. I also had the great opportunity to travel with Lanny Smith to the "Third International Health Conference" as part of the People's Health Assembly in Cuenca, Ecuador. I had the opportunity to expose on the health conditions in the U.S. and the health disparities (inequalities) of poor communities and communities of color. The medical student body of Cuenca was politicized and organized, light years ahead of anything here in the US.

I have given lots of thought on reaching the decision to run for the DGH board. I feel that I have matured enough to provide some leadership and more than anything provide time to help run and organize DGH. I would like to help DGH develop more grass-roots community health projects in the U.S. In this land of over-abundance the health inequalities based on race and class surpass even those of "Third World" countries. In this age of mass manipulation, disinformation and "either being with us or against us;" solidarity, education and conscience building are key to keep with the struggle of human rights and human dignity. DGH faces this tough struggle ahead, along with other groups of conscience, in a time of persecution, control and war. I would like to continue the endeavor of DGH of being a champion of health and human rights not only abroad but here at home as well.


Denise Zwahlen

I am completing a 3-year term on the Board of DGH. I joined the Board upon my return from Santa Marta, El Salvador where I spent the best part of the previous year. It was a key experience for me and a rich one: I participated in both local and international efforts to address the needs of the people most affected by the 2001 Earthquake; I worked in the local Ministry of Health Clinic; I participated in a community-based project looking at pesticide-health risk in the community. But more importantly, I shared in the life of the people of the community. I learned about their history. I came to understand the social, political and economical repression and exclusion they suffer and their amazing story of resistance and resilience.

They are now facing new challenges. They may not be shot at, their fields may not be burned or their children drown crossing the Rio Lempa fleeing into Honduras. But hunger and poverty leave them no choice then to cross the desert to reach the US. Once there, more then ever, they face the daily threat of detention and deportation. They are separated from their loved ones. They are denied their dignity and cultural identity.

In the face of these new challenges, a new generation is taking the lead: they run the local community Radio station; they lead the fight against the threat of HIV/AIDS by educating their peers; they participate in efforts to develop new methods of agriculture; most graduate from a High School that their community made happen; they are active politically, working towards changing the current political system in El Salvador.

One of my roles on the Board these last 3 years has been DGH point person for Santa Marta. In that capacity, I have worked with students and professionals interested to volunteer in Santa Marta. I have helped raised funds to support projects. I have paid yearly visit to keep a close feel for the pulse of the community and just to visit my many friends there.

Since my return from Santa Marta, I have found myself getting more and more involved with local issues: access to health, health disparity, immigration, the war abroad and in our neighborhoods, the negative impact of Free Trade with its privatization of public services. It is hard to really distinguish between local and global issues; they are all so interconnected.

But I feel strongly that the most important contribution we can make to the fight for social justice is by addressing the issues here at home and to change the policies that so negatively affect our partner communities. Nobody can do this work for us.

Think about CAFTA, for example: if the Congress does not vote against it, it is it. Its implementation will have disastrous consequences for El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Current immigration policies and the overall anti-immigrant climate mean people from our partner communities who take the trip north do it in increasingly dangerous conditions and even if they make it safely to their destination, face the daily uncertainty of apprehension, detention and deportation.

The war budget more then ever before has meant that most people in this country and in particular poor people and people of color, have seen the state of health, education and housing being eroded.

I would like to be part of a DGH that takes a more active role locally.

What does it mean to promote health and human rights with those who have no voice here in the Bronx, in Dorchester where I work, in Washington DC where Salvadorans have come to live?

How do we live by our principles of action here in the US? Maybe we could create domestic volunteer opportunities.

How can we effectively work towards changing the Health Care system?

What can be our contribution to the fight against invasion and occupation in the Middle East?

How do we confront and expose racism and classism?

To do that effectively, our organization needs to become more inclusive.

The People's Health Movement already exists in this country. We need to build alliances with those who constitute this movement here and join in with our counterparts in the rest of the world (civil society, community groups, grassroots' organizations).

I want to work with you, the DGH community, to respond to some of these challenges. I also plan to continue my involvement with the Santa Marta community in El Salvador and here in the US.


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