2009 GOLDEN APPLE HONOREES

Caroline Dueger, MD, MPH, DTM&H

Dr. Dueger volunteered with the HVO pediatrics program for many years at Cambodia's Angkor Hospital for Children, providing both clinical and didactic teaching, and working on the development of the faculty in this teaching hospital. She organized a “Child Protection Workshop”, addressing such issues as ethics, rights of the child, and child abuse which has significantly improved the assessment and treatment skills of the staff in handling these difficult issues. Within a month after the workshop, the staff was inspired to develop and implement a child sexual abuse protocol at the hospital.

Dr. Dueger served as the program director for the HVO pediatrics program in Cambodia from 1999 to 2009, coordinating the volunteer efforts and ensuring that volunteers were well prepared for their service. She is a member of the HVO Pediatrics Steering Committee.

Dr. Dueger is retired from her general pediatric practice in Concord, NH. She serves on the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on International Child Health. She has been an active member of HVO since 1996.

Kim Dunleavy, PT, PhD, OCS

Dr. Dunleavy has been tireless in improving the practice of and access to physical therapy services in developing countries. She has introduced active, hands-on teaching methods while teaching academicians, clinicians, and students in Vietnam and South Africa. As part of a U.S. Agency for International Development funded project in Vietnam, she contributed to the design and development of courses to upgrade physical therapy standards, developed materials, and trained instructors to deliver the course. The project also involved assisting with faculty development at Ho Chi Minh City's University of Medicine and Pharmacy. Her work in Ho Chi Minh City and with the universities in Danang and Hanoi, Vietnam has led to improved clinical skills and increased communication and interaction among the rehabilitation team, increased the skills of faculty, and furthered the growth of the physical therapy profession by facilitating a university-based degree program. This, in turn, has resulted in improved patient care.

In addition to mentoring faculty and students at program sites, Dr. Dunleavy has encouraged many other physical therapists in their volunteer assignments and has served as a mentor through her chairmanship of HVO's Physical Therapy Steering Committee. She has been involved in a number of site assessments to establish new programs, including one of the most successful HVO physical therapy programs in Suriname with Anton de Kom University. She is currently exploring linkages with Bedford Hospital and Umtata General Hospital in the Transkei, a former homeland in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.

Dr. Dunleavy has served on the HVO Board of Directors since 2002 and also serves as an advisor to the HVO Wound Management Steering Committee. She has been an HVO member since 1993. Dr. Dunleavy is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy in the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Wayne State University. Her doctoral dissertation documented the Globalized Design Process used by the World Health Organization to develop Blood Safety Distance learning materials and researched the fit and satisfaction of the materials in 95 countries. She intends to use the lessons learned from this project to contribute to the development of materials being used by HVO and others.

Richard Henker, PhD, RN, CRNA

Dr. Henker has been an excellent volunteer and teacher. Over a five-year period at Cambodia's Angkor Children's Hospital, he not only helped teach the Cambodian nursing anesthetists how to improve their anesthesia care but he began the process of training them to teach others. To that end, he formed a linkage with the University of Pittsburgh, which allows US students to gain valuable clinical experience in Cambodia and allows the local staff to gain valuable experience in being clinical instructors as they mentor and evaluate the American students. His efforts have helped develop the anesthesia providers at Angkor Children's Hospital into competent, able, and confident clinical instructors.

Dr. Henker has also been responsible for recruitment and design of a nurse anesthesia program in Bhutan which commenced earlier this year. This program will educate nurses to become nurse anesthetists in Bhutan, a country that has only 5 anesthesiologists and 14 nurse anesthetists. In addition, he serves on the Steering Committee for HVO's Nurse Anesthesia division.

Dr. Henker is on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing and he practices as a nurse anesthetist at UPMC-Presbyterian Hospital. He has been a member of HVO since 2004.

Elizabeth Kay, PT, PhD

Dr. Kay has had extensive service with HVO's physical therapy programs. She was a member of the Technical Advisory Group for a rehabilitation project in Vietnam and managed physical therapy activities in Uganda. Both projects were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and aimed to improve the quality of rehabilitation services and to strengthen the knowledge and skills of providers. Dr. Kay's involvement included curriculum development, teacher training, clinical training, and advocacy for the physical therapy profession. She worked closely with the Ministry of Health and physical therapy teachers to develop curricula and upgrade entry-level physical therapy education to the university level in Vietnam. Her long-term dedication to improving physical therapy has had a national impact on the quality of care and the credibility of the profession in each country.

In addition to her dedicated service in Vietnam and Uganda, Dr. Kay was instrumental in establishing the Physical Therapy division at HVO. Based on her work with HVO, in 2006 Dr. Kay received the President's Call to Service Award, which honors those who have dedicated over 4,000 hours of volunteer service, the equivalent of 2 years of full-time service.

Dr. Kay has been a member of HVO since 1990. Her commitment led her to serve as chair of HVO's Physical Therapy Steering Committee and as chair of HVO's Board of Directors from 1997 to 2000. Dr. Kay is an assistant research professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Northwestern University and a research scientist at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Barbara Latenser, MD, FACS

Dr. Latenser has been deeply involved with teaching and training burn management at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India. Her strong commitment over the last 3 years has led to changes in treatment practices at the hospital, which have resulted in drastic reductions in infections and the need for antibiotics. She has worked with local staff to emphasize burn prevention and her efforts have led to the establishment of regular burn management training in centers throughout the country. Her dedication has led her to host Indian staff on study tours to the Burn Centre in Iowa, so they could observe first-hand the coordination of a burn team.

Her leadership abilities have led her to serve as co-chair of HVO's Burn Management Steering Committee and the program director for the burn management program in India. She has been an HVO member since 2006. Dr. Latenser is the Clara L. Smith Professor of Burn Treatment at the University of Iowa and also serves as the Burn Treatment Center Director for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

Benedict Magsamen, MD

Dr. Magsamen's volunteer service in orthopaedics has spanned four continents. Early in his surgical career, Dr. Magsamen was an assistant professor and this background has been fully evident in his enthusiasm for teaching. He has shared his knowledge of orthopaedics through the teaching of medical students and doctors in local hospitals and medical schools. He has also taught during medical rounds and instructed in the operating room during surgeries, to provide hands-on clinical knowledge. In his international work, Dr. Magsamen emphasized basic orthopaedic skills that were appropriate to the local environment as well as simple procedures that vastly improved medical care, such as infection control measures.

Dr. Magsamen recently retired as an orthopaedic surgeon. He is one of the founders of the Orthopaedic Center of the Rockies, now in its 41st year of operation. He was a pioneer in the advent of joint replacement surgery in Colorado, played a key role in the development of Poudre Valley Hospital's orthopaedic surgery capabilities, and has been a team physician for professional and college football and basketball teams. He served as an elected member of the Board of Councilors for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and served as a board member of the Colorado Orthopaedic Society. He has been a member of HVO since 1997.

Joseph E. Sheppard, MD

Dr. Sheppard is a practicing hand and upper extremity/microvascular surgeon. He is also a dedicated clinical educator of medical students and orthopaedic residents. For the last five years, Dr. Sheppard has traveled to Honduras to work with the residents in the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Program at the Hospital Escuela. There he has provided comprehensive training in complex hand reconstruction, taught surgical techniques in the operating room, and taught patient evaluation skills in the clinic. He has also helped develop and administer the residents' required exams. His mentoring of the surgeons has meant arranging for a traveling fellowship to Arizona for further training. One of the surgeons he has mentored has now returned to Honduras to become Chief of Microsurgery at Hospital Escuela.

Dr. Sheppard's commitment to the Honduran faculty was acknowledged when he received the title of honorary faculty member in the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Hospital Escuela.

Dr. Sheppard is an Associate Professor of Clinical Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Arizona. He has been a member of HVO since 1999.

David Spiegel, MD

Dr. Spiegel has been a leader in international orthopaedics care. He has been a champion at spreading information on the work of the Ponseti clubfoot method, and his efforts have had a significant impact on the quality of care of clubfeet. He chaired the Carl T. Brighton Symposium on Musculoskeletal Trauma Care in the Developing World, which established a network of interested orthopaedic surgeons to help ease the burden of musculoskeletal trauma. His work with HVO's Orthopaedics division has been most notable in Nepal, where he established an education and training site in Kathmandu.

Based on his work with HVO, in 2007, Dr. Spiegel received the President's Call to Service Award, which honors those who have dedicated over 4,000 hours of volunteer service, the equivalent of 2 years of full-time service.

In addition to his volunteer service with HVO, Dr. Spiegel is chairman of the Committee on Children's Orthopaedics in Underdeveloped Regions (Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America), serves on the Advisory Board of the Ponseti International Association for Clubfoot Treatment and Global-HELP, and has worked on the World Health Organization's Global Initiative for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care. He is also a member of the Global Burden of Surgical Diseases Working Group, a member of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and a member of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America.

Dr. Spiegel works as a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and is on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has been a member of HVO since 1997.