Linnea Capps, MD, MPH, President & CEO, is 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: 2008-2011)
Jennifer Kasper, MD, MPH, FAAP, Vice President, is an Assistant Pediatrician at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, an Instructor at Harvard Medical School and the Clinical Specialist for Global HIV Programs at the FXB Center at UMDNJ. 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 1.5 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)
Elizabeth Rogers, MD, Chairperson, is a resident in the Harvard-Associated Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency Program at Brigham and Women's and Children's Hospitals in Boston. After undergrad at Loras College, she spent a year in Seattle as a Jesuit Volunteer. She then attended medical school at the University of Nebraska, her home state institution. During medical school, she took an extra year to focus on international health during which she spent six months as a DGH volunteer in Santa Marta, El Salvador, where she has since returned for a second six-week visit. She has also volunteered in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Pakistan. She is an active member of the DGH Volunteer Committee. (Board Term: 2007-2010)
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, leading 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 special education teacher in Syracuse, NY. (Board Term: 2007-2010)
Cathey Eisner Falvo, MD, MPH, Registrar, a long time activist in the movement for peace and justice, trained in pediatrics and preventive medicine/public health. She was the pediatrician for a neighborhood health center as well as professor and chair of public health at New York Medical College School of Public Health before resigning in 2005. She has been associated with DGH since its inception as a member of the Advisory Council. She has worked in Nicaragua both as a pediatrician and public health expert at various times since 1989 and made frequent working trips to Haiti and Vietnam. She has been on the Board of Directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility and currently is its representative to the International Society of Doctors for the Environment as well as at the UN. She served as a general medical officer and director of community health in the USPHS Indian Health Service on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. (Board Term: 2008-2011)
Linda Sharp, MD, Secretary, is currently an internist and chief resident 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 and Doctors for Peace, promoting health and human rights locally as well as internationally. Much of their work has focused on the health effects of war and violence. 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: 2009-2010)
Jonathan Kirsch, MD, International Volunteer Coordinator, is an internist in Durham, NC. He is an academic hospitalist at the University of North Carolina and also works with migrant farmworkers in Fuquay-Varina, NC. He has spent time in Chiapas, Mexico working in both hospital and rural settings throughout medical school and residency and took a year off of medical school to do health and human rights work in Minnesota and in Chiapas. (Board Term: 2008-2011)
Jessica Wallace, PA-C, MPH, Domestic Volunteer Coordinator, is a Physician Assistant at a large Community Health Center in Washington, DC, where the majority of patients are immigrants from Latin America (particularly El Salvador) and Africa. There she works as an urgent care provider and is also involved in many public health projects including working as co-coordinator of a popular family obesity prevention program. She has volunteered with DGH twice (2004 and 2006) in Chiapas as part of her graduate training at George Washington University, and stays active with DGH through contact with the communities in Chiapas and as a member of the International Volunteer Committee. (Board Term: 2008-2011)
Emily Bhargava, MA, Finance & Development Committee Chair, is Director of the Regional Center for Healthy Communities (Metrowest) in Cambridge, MA. Having received her BA from McGill University in Canada, Emily worked in public health in Guatemala, Chile, and the United States before completing a Masters in Medical Anthropology at Universiteit van Amsterdam. Emily's work focuses on fostering community-led health initiatives, equitable allocation of community resources and cross-cultural understanding. (Board Term: 2007-2010)
Jyoti Puvvula MD, MPH, Advocacy Counsel, 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: 2008-2011)
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: 2007-2010)
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: 2007-2010)
Daniel Bausch, MD, MPH&TM, 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)
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)
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)
Isabel Quintero, PT, 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. She is currently studying a Masters in Neurological Rehabilitation at Keele University (UK). (Board Term: 2009-2012)
Anje Van Berckelaer, MD, is a family physician in Philadelphia, trained at Harvard Medical School and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. She has volunteered in Estancia, El Salvador and Altamirano (Chiapas), Mexico with Doctors for Global Health, and spent a year working in international humanitarian assistance in West and Central Africa. She currently researches how to improve health care for low-income and minority communities in the United States and sees patients in a community health center in West Philadelphia. (Board Term: 2009-2012)
Denise Zwahlen, PA-C, MPH, a native of Switzerland, is a Physician Assistant who has been working in community-based health centers across Massachusetts for the last 20 years. She completed her undergraduate studies in Sociology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, received her training as a Physician Assistant at Northeastern University and her MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Since volunteering in Santa Marta El Salvador in 2001-2002, Denise has served as DGH liaison with the community. Her current priority is her involvement with the activities of the Human Rights and Advocacy Committee, both in the US and abroad. (Board Term: 2008-2011)
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