Project HOPE Volunteers Continue Continuing Promise '08 Mission

Volunteers from Project HOPE are participating in their fourth humanitarian assistance mission with the United States Navy this year. Embarking the USS Kearsarge in Haiti, there are currently 10 volunteers from across the United States aboard to provide health care and health education as part of Continuing Promise 2008 to Central and South America. In all nearly 50 Project HOPE volunteers will join colleagues from non-governmental organizations and Navy medical personnel to provide basic health care, health education and humanitarian assistance to children and adults who often do not have access to care.
-Marisol

Meet the Project Hope Team Currently Aboard the USS Kearsarge

Julia Taylor, PACU RN
Residing in Tucson, AZ, Julia is a former teacher, and civilian computer scientist for the federal government. Julia enjoys reading, camping, and biking. She will remain on the ship most of the time in Dominican Republic, as cases are brought into the operating room.

Lydia Segal, MD
Lydia is a family practice doctor. She is a former journalist, who went into family practice, then integrative medicine, and is back to family practice. She grew up in the Bronx, attended college and medical school in Arizona, and now lives in the Washington, D.C. area with her husband.

Rena Rovere, MS, FNP-C
Residing in Altamont, NY, Rena is a family nurse practitioner who regularly volunteers with Compassion in Action. She has 25 years as a clinical nurse specialist in the emergency room and has seven years experience as a family nurse practitioner. She enjoys biking, swimming, walking, reading, and is practicing her Spanish. She and her husband have three grown children.

Sharon Weintraub, MD
Sharon is a general surgeon at a hospital-based trauma/critical care/acute care practice in Baltimore. Born and raised in New York, she moved last year from New Orleans where she studied public health at Tulane University. She also worked with Doctors Without Borders last year at a project in West Africa. Sharon was able to perform an emergency appendectomy on one of the crew members assigned to the USS Kearsarge.

Hilary Warren, MD
Raised in Kansas City, Hilary works in a large pediatric practice in Boise, Idaho. After training in the Midwest, she participated on medical missions in Peru and Honduras. The youngest member of our team at 33, Hilary enjoys the many outdoor activities of Idaho, and keeps fit in the USS Kearsarge gym while on board.

Linda Rothery, FNP
Linda is a family nurse practitioner and is currently enrolled in the doctorate program at the University of Florida and is using her Project HOPE experience as an elective independent study course. A breast cancer survivor, she worked in post-Katrina clean-ups and was a volunteer at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Greece. She plans international mission work after graduation.

Maria Morris, RN, MPH
Maria, who grew up in New York, was a nurse educator at UC-Berkeley “many years ago”. Now she is a student at the University of Texas-Houston in the nurse practitioner program, and has worked in women’s health in the Middle East and in Venezuela. Her husband is a petroleum engineer currently stationed in Saudi Arabia, where Maria spends six months of the year. She and her husband have two sons. Maria makes one of a kind character dolls for fun and speaks fluent Spanish “thanks to my Puerto Rican parents.”

Nancy Foote, MD
Nancy is the Medical Director, Operations Manager, Chief Education Officer, and everything in between for the Project HOPE team. With her great energy and enthusiasm, she makes everything easier. A family physician, she currently resides in the Seattle area. Her areas of service include over two years in Zimbabwe with the American Friends Service Committee, working with the migrant workers of the Northwest, and most recently a position as a Spanish medical interpreter for the University of Washington Medical Center. She has two grown children.

Enrique Abreu, DO
Enrique is an anesthesiologist who belongs to a large private practice in Portland, Oregon. Of Cuban descent, Enrique has cousins in both Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. In the last three years, he has been on eight medical missions, mostly with ROTOPLAST, traveling to Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil. He is a fluent Spanish speaker who enjoys taking photos with his Nikon, listening to a large variety of music, and at home, kiteboarding.

Lillian Sanpere, LM, CPM
Lillian has a birthing center in Tallahassee, FL where she takes care of pregnant women, births babies and trains new licensed midwives. Born in Miami, she was raised in the Caribbean. While on liberty in Puerto Rico, she was able to visit with her two sisters who she hadn’t seen for several years. Lillian is a strong person who after her last chemo treatment for colon cancer, made plans to walk the Camino de Santiago in the Pyrinnes Mountains in Spain. She walked nearly 400 miles and the following year, walked another part of the trail for over 500 miles.

Inga Kimple, BSJ
Inga is the Public Affairs Officer for the trip. Now residing near Cincinnati, she has lived in eight states and is a semi-retired journalist and freelance writer. When not writing, she spends a good deal of time in the Yucatan, working with the Maya, and in Ohio works with the Hispanic population and as an English as a Second Language tutor. She was on four post-Katrina trips in Mississippi. She also enjoys living near her family, especially her two young grandchildren.