Linnea Capps, MD, MPH, President & CEO, is a physician and site coordinator for the Chiapas project. Prior to 2011, she was the Associate Director of the Department of Medicine at Harlem Hospital and also Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Columbia University in New York City. She lived in El Salvador from 1986-1987 doing volunteer health work and spent 1998 working in the DGH project in Chiapas, Mexico. Linnea returns to Chiapas regularly. (Board Term: 2011-2014)
Daniel Bausch, MD, MPH&TM, Vice President, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA. He is a physician who is board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases with a master's degree in public health and tropical medicine. Dan specializes in tropical viruses and has extensive experience in research, outbreak control, community health development, and medical training in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia. He also has a keen interest in the role of the scientist in promoting health and human rights. (Board Term: 2009-2012)
Elizabeth Rogers, MD, Chairperson, is a Primary Care Research Fellow at the University of California San Francisco where she does clinical work in internal medicine and pediatrics at San Francisco General Hospital, the public hospital in the city, and does research in the area of community health worker models of care. She trained at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine and the Harvard-Associated Medicine and Pediatrics Residency at Brigham and Women's and Children's Hospitals in Boston. During medical school, she spent six months as a DGH volunteer in Santa Marta, El Salvador, where she has since returned for a second stay in the community. She has also volunteered in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Pakistan. She is an active member of the DGH Volunteer Committee. (Board Term: 2010-2013)
Shirley Novak, MA, Treasurer, is a charter member of the DGH Board. She has participated in El Salvador solidarity work since 1984, through Syracuse Covenant Sanctuary, an NGO that advocated for and protected undocumented Salvadoran refugees in the US. Since 1993, she has coordinated the Syracuse, NY-La Estancia Sister Community in rural El Salvador, organizing annual delegations. A former teacher of immigrant adults learning English and an Early Childhood and Family Educator in a bilingual preschool program, Shirley currently works with developmentally delayed Latino preschoolers as a bilingual special education teacher in Syracuse, NY. (Board Term: 2010-2013)
Linda Sharp, MD, Secretary, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at Harbor-UCLA, one of Los Angeles's county hospitals. She also works with other physicians and local activists in LA as part of DGH-LA, promoting health and human rights locally as well as internationally. She worked in Oaxaca, Mexico during the summer of 2010 at CEPAFOS, learning integrative and traditional medicine and helping teach community health workers. She spent time in Chiapas, Mexico in 2008 working at Hospital San Carlos, and traveled to El Salvador in 2007 for the DGH General Assembly. She hopes to assist other local DGH groups continue to work for health and human rights in their local communities. (Board Term: 2010-2013)
Anje Van Berckelaer, MD, MSc., Registrar, is Clinical Director of Performance Improvement at Delaware Valley Community Health in Philadelphia. She is a family physician, trained at Harvard Medical School and in the family medicine residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. She has worked in pediatric malnutrition and TB/HIV programs in sub-saharan Africa with Doctors Without Borders. She has volunteered in Estancia, El Salvador and Altamirano (Chiapas), Mexico with Doctors for Global Health. (Board Term: 2009-2012)
Ajantha Attaluri, Development and Finance Chair, is an Applications Engineer at a facilities management software company, by profession. Born and brought up in a coastal city called Visakhapatnam in South India, she was raised by communist grandparents, parents and their close-knit family friends. She strongly believes that access to real food, clean water, safe shelter and health care is the most basic human right.
Ajantha has been working on the DGH website for the last two years. She is interested in using her software skills for community outreach and fund-raising. She hopes to empower partner communities with the aid of technology. (Board Term: 2011-2014)
Jennifer Kasper, MD, MPH, FAAP, International Volunteer Chair, is an Assistant Pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, an Instructor at Harvard Medical School and a Pediatrician at the Chelsea HealthCare Center, serving mostly Latino immigrant families. She has been actively involved with Doctors for Global Health since 1996 when she served as a volunteer pediatrician and field coordinator in rural El Salvador for nearly two years. She has worked in Honduras, Nicaragua, India, and Chiapas, Mexico. From May 2007 - September 2008, she worked with Health Alliance International in Mozambique, serving as a Pediatric HIV/AIDS Technical Advisor and the Manager of the HIV/AIDS Program. Jennifer specializes in child rights, child poverty, immigrants and hunger, child labor, and pediatric HIV/AIDS. She mentors students and residents interested in global health. (Board Term: 2009-2012)
Jyoti Puvvula MD, MPH, Human Rights and Advocacy Chair, is Assistant Clinical Professor at the Harbor-UCLA Department of Family Medicine and Geffen UCLA School of Medicine. She directs the community medicine curriculum there with focus on health & human rights, social injustice, poverty medicine. Her interests are also in underserved, maternal & child health and immigrant health. Co-founder of local group Doctors for Peace and Justice, she works on education and activism surrounding issues of war and human rights as well. She volunteers annually with DGH in Chiapas, Mexico. Other international work has been in India, Sri Lanka disaster relief, Guatemala and Mexico. (Board Term: 2011-2014)
Isabel Quintero, PT, MNR, Communications Chair, is of British and Mexican-American descent and is currently based in Madrid, Spain. She has traveled extensively and worked as a physical therapist in Italy, France and Spain. Isabel has also helped develop Community-Based Rehabilitation programs by training and accompanying local health promoters in Santa Marta (El Salvador), India and Indonesia. As an active member of DGH-Europe, she is interested in creating links with like-mind organizations and groups throughout the world. (Board Term: 2009-2012)
Trisha Schimek, MSPH, Domestic Volunteer Coordinator, is currently a medical student at Jefferson Medical College. She is originally from Minnesota, and moved to New Orleans to complete her undergraduate work and Masters in Public Health at Tulane University. She first participated with DGH at the 13th Annual General Assembly in El Salvador, and has since volunteered in Chiapas, Mexico and most recently in Quetzaltenago, Guatemala with the Primeros Pasos clinic. (Board Term: 2011-2014)
Lanny Smith, MD, MPH, DTM&H, Liberation Medicine Counsel & President's Council of Honor Member, is the founding president of DGH and Associate Professor of Medicine in the Residency Programs of Primary Care and Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. At Montefiore he is Assistant Director of the Human Rights Clinic for Victims of Torture and a practicing community health physician in the South Bronx. For six and a half years (1992-8), Lanny served as the volunteer Coordinator of the Salvadoran Mission of "Médecins du Monde-France" (Physicians of the World-France) in Morazán, El Salvador (a program using "health as reconciliation" and responsible for "building health where the peace is new" through community health promoters, day care centers, women's rights programs, clinic-schools, a bridge and other means). From that experience he pioneered the concept of Liberation Medicine (the conscious, conscientious use of health to promote social justice and human dignity). He has also helped create the Social Medicine Portal, a web site devoted linking together the diverse international community of people working in social medicine and health activism. (Board Term: 2010-2013)
Michéle Brothers, MIA, DGH Europe Liason, who is Franco American, arrived in Paris in 1985 from her hometown of New York, where she had worked with the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). She was manager of International Development at Médecins du Monde in Paris and the MDM representative in New York with the U.S delegation during 2000-01. Michéle founded and manages International Connections, a small consulting group based in Paris. She received degrees from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and a MIA from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in NY. She is a founding member of Women in Film France and is on the board of AARO (Association of American Residents Overseas). Michéle, who has previously been a DGH Advisory Council member, is particularly interested in DGH's whole approach and the use of the arts to reach out, exchange ideas with and inform populations about health and human rights concerns. (Board Term: 2010-2013)
Irma Cruz Nava, MD, a native of Mexico, is currently the Medical Counsel for the Centro Popular de Apoyo y Formación para la Salud (Popular Center for the Support and Formation of Health), in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. She also teaches first aid classes to Physical Education students at a local university. She is working to organize a nonprofit, nongovernmental group to work with women in the Istmo de Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca. Irma recently completed a degree in Health Promotion and is studying Health Administration. A few years ago, she returned to Mexico after many years in El Salvador, where she worked with then DGH partner Medicos por el Derecho a la Salud (Doctors for the Right to Health), working with and training health promoters. (Board Term: 2009-2012)
Caitlin Lassus, MD, is currently a resident at the Harbor-UCLA Family Medicine Residency program in Los Angeles, CA. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, she and her husband Don Lassus volunteered for a year in Estancia, El Salvador, working with DGH and CDH, an experience that deepened her understanding of the connection between health and the societal factors that determine the wellness of individuals and communities. She continues to work actively with DGH-LA, and will continue to serve the Estancia and other DGH communities as a member of the Board of Directors. (Board Term: 2011-2014)
Sara L. Doorley, MD is an internal medicine physician for the Santa Clara Valley Homeless Healthcare Program in San Jose, California where she serves the homeless, the migrant farm worker, and the vulnerable patient population. She is a graduate of the Wright State University School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio and attended the Montefiore Social Medicine Residency Program in the Bronx, NY. She has been involved with Doctors for Global Health since 2003 and has served as an international volunteer in Santa Marta, El Salvador and Kisoro, Uganda. She also has volunteer experience in Haiti, Palestine, and Guatemala. She is a strong advocate for liberation medicine, community health empowerment models, and the preferential option for the poor. (Board Term: 2011-2014)
Lleni Pach, MD, is associate professor, Department of Psychiatry, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY; Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association; member of The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Born in Lima, Peru, she obtained her MD degree from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Lleni has volunteered her medical services in Chiapas (Mexico), Cuzco ( Peru), Managua (Nicaragua), Nairobi (Kenya), Daramsala (India), and Syracuse (New York) at Vera House, an organization that helps victims of Domestic Violence. Since January 2008 she has been in charge of the Cuzco Project in Peru. She is a Member of the Peruvian-American Medical Society. (Board Term: 2009-2012)
Monica Sanchez is a freelance editorial and web site consultant on health education and policy. Previously she worked promoting health care reform as the Research and Insurer Campaign Education Director for the Institute for America's Future, where she coordinated and developed health insurance policy research and a web site to promote public and Congressional understanding that the private insurance industry cannot lead health care reform and that a public insurance plan option is vital to comprehensive, sustainable reform. Before that she was the Deputy Director of the Medicare Rights Center, a not-for-profit organization devoted to education and advocacy for older Americans and people with disabilities, where she was Director of both the Education and Policy departments. She was also Executive Editor of Health Pages, an online health information service devoted to empowering health care consumers to make informed health care choices. A native of Colombia, South America, she majored in Journalism and Mass Communications and has specialized in health writing and the promotion of health as a human right. Monica has been involved with Doctors for Global Health since its inception and is former Vice President of the DGH Board of Directors. She designs and edits the DGH newsletter and created the first DGH web site. (Board Term: 2010-2013)
Jenny Abrams, MD, is a resident physician at the Swedish Cherry Hill Family Medicine Residency program in Seattle, WA. During medical school, she spent 6 months as a DGH volunteer in Estancia, El Salvador. Since leaving Estancia, she has worked with the International Volunteer Commiteee to recruit and assist volunteers, and participates in the Estancia work group through regular conference calls. Jenny is devoted to providing health care to marginalized communities in the US and abroad. As a dancer and yoga teacher, she also delights in promoting nutrition, musculoskeletal well-being, mental health, and creative expression. (Board Alternate: 2011-2012)
Alex Luger, MD, is an internal medicine resident at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, CA. During medical school at the University of Minnesota, he spent 6 months in Santa Marta, El Salvador as a DGH volunteer. He also currently serves on the DGH International Volunteer Committee. His current focus is on the environmental movement in El Salvador, which has been working to prevent environmental harm from international mining. He is also interested in exploring the community-level effects of mining in the context of international trade policy. His interests include community medicine, psychosocial medicine, motivational interviewing, and social determinants of health. (Board Alternate: 2011-2012)
