Biography
I have worked professionally in medicine, surgery, public health, and psychiatry. I was a physician assistant from 1983 until I retired in 2010.
In 1984, I ran an outpatient clinic for the American Refugee Committee in Nong Samet Refugee Camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. I then volunteered as a surgical assistant at the Huria Kristen Batak Protestant Hospital in Balige, Sumatra, Indonesia. I worked in the prison infirmary at the North Central Correctional Institution in Massachusetts for three years, then joined the Peace Corps and served as a health volunteer in Guinea-Bissau, where I ran a community health center. Having acquired a working knowledge of Portuguese, I then went to Mozambique, where I worked in a prosthetics assistance project for amputees, run by Health Volunteers Overseas. From there, I went to Angola, where I was site manager in an immunization program run by the International Medical Corps. From 1996 until 1997 I ran a malaria control program for Doctors Without Borders in the Yanomami indigenous area in Brazil, continuing the same program for CCPY from 1998 until 2001. After obtaining a Master's Degree in public health at Boston University, I ran a health education program for Survivor Corps until 2010. I taught at James Madison University, where I supervised peer support programs for survivors of war-related violence who are affected by PTSD. I was a Visiting Assistant Professor there until 2017.
At various times, I have also worked in an abortion clinic, on an organ transplant team, in a psychiatric hospital, in a methadone clinic, in the Mozambican Ministry of Health, as assistant to an orthopedic surgeon, and as a consultant for the Clinton Foundation and for the CDC. I have 14 publications in peer-reviewed journals, on infectious disease, public health and peer support for survivors of war-related trauma. I now work as a Crisis Intervention Clinician in a hospital emergency room.
I am interested in:
- Infectious diseases
- Public health
- American fiction and criticism during and after World War II
- The history of Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia
- Indigenous peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas
- The history of Native American Indians
- The colonial history of Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania during the 17th and 18th centuries
- Representations of magic and witchcraft in folklore
- Refugees and internally displaced persons
- Humanitarian aid agencies and aid workers
- Refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border, 1970s to 1993
- Biographical articles of all kinds, especially captivity narratives
- Peer support for survivors of psychological trauma due to war-related violence.
- The life of Mary Draper Ingles, one of my ancestors, and of other colonial-era Americans who recorded captivity narratives about being taken prisoner by Native Americans or by the French.
Below are articles that I have either created (
) or into which I have provided significant input:
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) or into which I have provided significant input: