Haiti Medical Mission Cast of Characters ...

We have 15 enthusiastic and hard working team mates here! What great people!

Co- leaders M. Linda Brown MD MPH and Nick Candee return for their 3^rd Epiphany Haiti mission.  This is Linda’s 4^th, as she worked in Haiti a month after the January 2010 earthquake.  The Epiphany mission began in early 2011 when Susie Almquist and Linda Brown decided to organize a medical mission to Haiti from Epiphany. Linda sought help from Dr. Emilie Hitron who has taken medical missions to Haiti for over 10 years. The first team of five included Susie as well as Mary Provo and John Cuozzo, who all returned as veterans on the second mission in 2012 (alas we are not blessed with their skills and good company this year).  The second mission team also included Cherie Arruda, Didier Collin, Reid Boswell, Sandy Bristol, Carol Hollingshead, Bill Saunders, Nancy Strong, Marissa Seligman, Dan Seligman and Phyllis Pengelly.

 

INTRODUCTIONS TO OUR MISSION 3 TEAM:

Linda is a primary care doctor at Brigham & Women’s in Chestnut Hill. Medical relief work is her passion, which started in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch, 1999. She returned to study public health, and earned a MPH at Harvard in June 2001. Since 2001, she has done international medical work in many parts of the world.

 Nick, her husband, serves as chief of mission control as well as a master pill counter in the pharmacy. He is former head of global operations for the NFPA and opened offices in Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Ottawa, Paris and Hong Kong. He also launched a magazine and trade show / conference in Spanish, completed many licensing accords for translations, and was a frequent speaker in fire safety events, often in Spanish or Portuguese.

VETERANS:  Reid Boswell, Carol Hollingshead, and Bill Saunders returned after serving on Mission 2

Reid is an occupational health physician at Mount Auburn Hospital and at least for one week out of the year, attempts to transform into a somewhat workable primary care physician.

Carol retired after working at Meditech (a medical software company) for 30 years and has gone on several Epiphany missions with Bill.

 
Bill retired after working as a marketing guru for a couple of high tech companies, which allows him to go on meaningful trips to places like Haiti and Rwanda.

 NEW MEMBERS:

 
Laura Carman MD is a primary care physician at Cambridge Health Alliance in Revere, and fluent in French (and by the way, with her husband Tom Goslin is one snappy tango dancer).

Mike Chesson, a history professor and guru on the US Civil War, is hanging out with old friends, making new ones, and very happy to have been invited to join the team.

 Jill Diorio had long wanted to join one of these missions. She was wonderful in making our 3^rd Creole dinner the success that it was.  In March, she will be traveling to El Hogar in Honduras

Barbara Foot with MS Public Health has long-standing interest in international health.  She worked for UNICEF long ago with a focus on French West Africa, and is the new co- chair for Mission & Outreach at PoE, so she is walking the talk.

 

Virginia Harrington of Marshfield worked with Carol at Meditech, and was enticed to join our mission from Carol and Bill’s stories. She is serving as our LPN.

Gloria Korta MD is a GYN specialist at Winchester hospital. She worked in a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, and so early on used French for hands- on care.

Kate Saunders is a daughter of Bill and Carol, grew up at PoE, and was also enticed to join our mission from her parent’s stories. She works on IT for Meditech.

SUPPORT FROM ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH: We are blessed with the talents of Suzanne Bloore, as well as Steve and Donna Gross.

 Suzanne Bloore led All Saints’ last mission to Honduras, and is fluent in Spanish [and Portuguese]. Creole will be an interesting challenge. She is a lawyer.

 
Donna Gross has been a Nurse Practitioner at the Holyoke clinic at Harvard for 40 years, so our alumni from that community college may have met her professionally!  She lived in Haiti for a month 35 years ago.

 Steve worked as a Jesuit priest in Honduras, and later worked for ACCION on micro-finance throughout South America, so he is fluent in Spanish. In his third transformation, he served as chaplain for hospice.

 LOCAL TEAM:  our Haitian colleagues joined our team in Leogane. Let us introduce them!

Dr. Alex LeBrun, MD returns for his 3^rd year working with us. He is our line coach on dealing with tropical diseases as well as pediatrics. He is married; his wife and young daughter are at home in Port au Prince.

 
Dr. Emmanuel Bastien, DDS also returns for his 3^rd year with us, and impressed on us the importance of dental extraction for pain relief in this setting. His practice in Leogane was destroyed in the earthquake, but he opened a dental clinic at HSC in 2012. His wife and daughter live in Leogane.

Nurse Roseline Telfort  was with us in 2011 and we are delighted she is back with us in 2013!

We look forward to a lively week here in the state of Ouest!