Our work at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) brings together medical and legal experts, humanitarian experts, as well as those from the advocacy, legislative, and policy & research sectors.
Advocacy work is currently the focus of our efforts, as we continue to press for the implementation of our recommendations to the UN, humanitarian agencies and international donors to provide for the protection, support and justice needs of Darfuri women.
Advocacy
Susannah Sirkin, MEd
Susannah Sirkin is Deputy Director for International Policy and Advocacy of Physicians for Human Rights. Susannah has organized health and human rights investigations in dozens of countries, including documentation of genocide and systematic rape in Darfur between 2004-2009. She has worked on studies of sexual violence in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, and Thailand, and authored/edited numerous reports and articles on the medical consequences of human rights violations, physical evidence of human rights abuses, and physician complicity in violations.
John C. Bradshaw, J.D.
John Bradshaw has been Policy Director at Physicians for Human Rights since December 2006. He is responsible for developing and implementing policy advocacy strategies on a wide range of human rights subjects including U.S. interrogation and detention practices, asylum policy, the conflict in Darfur, and global HIV/AIDS and health policy. He directs PHR’s relations with Congress and the Executive Branch. Prior to coming to PHR Bradshaw served as the coordinator of the Human Rights Leadership Coalition, a group made up of 12 major U.S. human rights organizations, including PHR.
Joe Read, MA (Cantab)
Joe Read is Darfur Fellow at Physician for Human Rights, working on research and advocacy to address the protection, support and justice needs of Darfur women. Joe spearheaded South Carolina’s Sudan divestment campaign in 2008, making South Carolina the 25th state to divest from Sudan, and has worked with Darfuri civil society in various European, African and American organizations since 2003. Joe is also a research fellow at the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies.
Dr. Mohammed Ahmed, MD
Dr. Mohammed Ahmed is a prominent Sudanese physician and Professor of Medicine at el-Fasher University in Darfur, specializing in the treatment of survivors of torture and sexual violence. Dr. Mohammed is the former medical treatment director at the Amel Center for the Treatment & Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture in Darfur, and the 2007 recipient of the RFK Human Rights Award. Dr. Mohammed is a member of the Sudanese Center for Rights Promotion and Peace Building, an organization to prevent human rights violations, combat impunity, and promote peace and reconciliation in Darfur and Sudan as a whole.
Dr. Shaza Elmahdi, MD
Dr. Shaza Elmahdi is a Sudanese medical doctor and women’s rights advocate from Khartoum. In addition to her medical training at the University of Khartoum and Johns Hopkins University, she has authored several papers on rape in conflict situations, with specific focus on Darfur. She works on numerous civil society issues as a member of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, the Khartoum International Center for Human Rights and the Salmmah Women’s Resource Center, with particular focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Field Team
Sondra Crosby, MD
Assistant Professor, BU School of Medicine
Dr. Sondra Crosby is the former Director of Medical Services at the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights (BCRHHR). She is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, and a member of the Section of General Internal Medicine at Boston Medical Center. To date, she has examined almost 300 survivors of torture and provides instruction to physicians and health care workers about caring for survivors of torture. Dr. Crosby is currently developing a curriculum for primary care doctors.
Linda Piwowarczyk, MD, MPH
BCRHHR Director, International Mental Health Program
Dr. Lin Piwowarczyk, Co-Founder and Director of the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights is a psychiatrist at Boston Medical Center, board certified in Psychiatry and Internal Medicine. She specializes in the mental health evaluation and treatment of torture survivors, and since 2002, Dr. Piwowarczyk has served on the Executive Committee of the National Consortium of Torture Treatment Programs. In 2005, she was awarded the Local Legends Award from the National Library of Medicine that honors female physicians
Julia VanRooyen, MD, F.A.C.O.G.
Fellow, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Dr. VanRooyen is a gynecologic surgeon, with subspecialty training in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery. She trained in gynecology and obstetrics at Northwestern University in Chicago, and completed her uro-gynecology training at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Her international experience with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative includes work in Somalia, Kenya, and Russia. Dr. VanRooyen’s current interests are in gender-based violence and the medical, surgical and psychological complications of rape and sexual abuse.
Karen Hirschfeld, MA
Karen Hirschfeld is the Director of the Darfur Survival Campaign for Physicians for Human Rights. She was the project coordinator and team leader of PHR’s November 2008 field investigation in Chad study the long-term physical and mental health consequences of rape on Darfuri women. Ms. Hirschfeld also worked in the humanitarian assistance arena in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kosovo.
Chad Report US Team
Susan Bartels, MD, MPH
Susan Bartels is a physician and public health practitioner. Her international work includes a mortality study in the Democratic Republic of Congo, refugee work in Tanzania and the development of an early warning drought surveillance system in southern Ethiopian. Dr. Bartels has co-authored a paper entitled Sexual Violence During War and Forced Migration for The United Nations Population Fund and is also a principal investigator on a sexual violence study in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Adrienne Fricke, MA, JD
Adrienne L. Fricke is an expert on human rights in the Middle East and Africa. A fluent Arabic-speaker, she recently completed a fellowship teaching at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program. Ms. Fricke is a consultant to numerous non-governmental organizations and in 2007 led a field mission to Sudan to investigate the impact of Sudan’s laws on survivors of rape. Ms. Fricke previously served on the Coalition for International Justice’s Atrocities Documentation Team, with whom she traveled to eastern Chad to interview refugees from Darfur.
Gregg Greenough, MD, MPH
Gregg Greenough has worked extensively in settings of disasters and conflict applying epidemiologic methods to public health problems within affected populations. He is an emergency room physician, currently practicing at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and has an MPH from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Greenough is currently the director of research at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and an editor for Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. Dr. Greenough has worked in relief operations in the Balkans, Central America, Africa, the US, and the Palestinian Territories.
Vincent Iacopino, MD, PhD
Dr. Vincent Iacopino is Senior Medical Advisor to Physicians for Human Rights and Adjunct Professor of Medicine with the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Iacopino has participated in health and human rights research, investigations and advocacy for more than sixteen years. He has represented PHR and/or supervised medical fact-finding investigations to Thailand, Punjab, Kashmir, Turkey, South Africa, Afghanistan, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Chechyna, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Mexico, Botswana, Swaziland, Iraq, Sudan and the United States, and documented the health consequences of a wide range of human rights violations
Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH
Jennifer Leaning teaches disaster management, human rights, and response to humanitarian crises. She has field experience in problems of disaster response and human rights (particularly in Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Kosovo, the Middle East, former Soviet Union, Somalia, the Chad-Darfur border, and the African Great Lakes area) and has written widely on these issues. She is lead editor of Humanitarian Crises: The Medical and Public Health Response, published by Harvard University Press in 1999.
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