DANBURY, CT - Dr. Majid Sadigh, Director of the Global Health Department at Danbury Hospital, invites fellow colleagues, doctors, medical students, residents and members of the community to attend the next Global Health Evening with discussions focused on Global Health issues. The program takes place on Wednesday, March 13, 2013 from 5:30-7 p.m. in the Gerard D. Robilotti Conference Center located on the 5th floor of the Tower Building. Attendees are asked to park in the Red Garage (Locust Avenue entrance). Refreshments will be provided.
Featured speakers at the March 13th Global Health Evening are Torkin Wakefield and her husband Dr. Charles Steinberg. Torkin Wakefield will talk about the BeadforLife organization’s mission to create sustainable opportunities for women in Uganda. Dr. Steinberg will be speaking about challenges and rewards of teaching HIV care around the world.
Wakefield is the Global Ambassador and a co-founder of BeadforLife, and has been a social activist since her college days. Her career of public service began as a Peace Corps volunteer in India. Working collaboratively, Wakefield has co-founded many organizations that help poor or marginalized people. These include AIDS, Medicine and Miracles, a national organization of education and community building for people living with HIV/AIDS, Wellspring, a holistic healing center, The World Sits Down to Dinner, a hunger-advocacy experience, Hollyhock Retreat Center in British Columbia and BeadforLife. Wakefield was also director of People’s Clinic, a clinic for the medically indigent.
As a psychologist and public health administrator, her life interests span personal health and well being to cultural and social change at the community and national level. An inveterate traveler, Wakefield has lived and worked in India, Nepal, Mexico, Kenya, and Uganda. Her ability to involve others in creating a better world makes her projects dynamic and effective. Wakefield weaves the power of the story and the vision of a better world to release the inherent generosity of people in the resource-abundant world.
Dr. Charles Steinberg, Wakefield’s husband, was one of the first physicians to treat AIDS/HIV during the early 80s. In 1985, he started the clinic Wellspring Partners in Health to focus his efforts on people living with HIV/AIDS. Two years later, Steinberg founded “AIDS, Medicine and Miracles,” a national conference for people living with HIV/AIDS in order to help his patients develop a support community. From 1995 to 2003, he went on to direct the Beacon Center for Infectious Disease in Boulder.
Beyond Boulder, Steinberg has dedicated his time to international medical work in Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Nepal, Mexico, Peru, Romania and the Ukraine. After 20 years practicing medicine, he left his practice to train African doctors in infectious diseases. Currently, Steinberg serves as the chief senior trainer and consultant at the Infectious Diseases Institute at the Makerere University Medical School in Kampala, Uganda. There he trains nurses and clinical officers to be primary caregivers to people living with HIV/AIDS.
Wakefield and Steinberg have two adult children and two grandsons. They reside in Boulder, Colorado.
BeadforLife is an organization whose mission is to create sustainable opportunities for women in Uganda to lift their families out of extreme poverty by connecting people worldwide in a circle of exchange that enriches everyone. More information can be found at http://www.beadforlife.org/en/frontpage/us.
For more information about the March 13th Global Health Night at Danbury Hospital, please call Gina Lacey, Danbury Hospital Office of Medical Education and Research at (203) 739-4964.
