Global Health
I am the director of the Wilderness and Environmental Medicine Program, which includes a semi-annual student elective that emphasizes pathophysiology in extreme environments and improvisational medicine skills for care in austere conditions. These skills are particularly useful for treating patients in developing nations with limited resources. In 2006, I worked in Nepal with the Himalayan Rescue Association and the Wilderness Medical Society in a high altitude clinic that serves the Sherpa and mountain climbers. I've also worked in Guyana with the nonprofit organization Guyanawatch to set up and staff primary care clinics in remote communities in 2007. Currently, I spend about 1 month per year working abroad.
This past summer I was elected Secretary of the Wilderness Medical Society. My colleagues in these projects include Dr. Flavio Gaudio here in New York as well as Dr. Eloy Rodriguez, a botanist at Cornell in Ithaca who works in the naturopathic basis of medicine. Our program is active in research, and currently studying backcountry injury epidemiology, safe water procurement, and the utility of epinephrine in the field. We have also hosted a major Wilderness Medicine Conference at Cornell in 2007 I am also interested in and have authored papers on the use of medicine as a tool of diplomacy. All of these projects are very open to student involvement, and please contact me if you are interested.
