Yes, It’s Still Here, and So Is the Flu – An Update on COVID-19 and the Seasonal Flu

As the Chief Medical Officer for Migrant Clinicians Network, Dr. Madaras is responsible for the oversight of MCN clinical activities. He also serves as a subject matter expert for various topics in migrant and immigrant health including COVID-19 clinical education. Since the first weeks of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Dr. Madaras treated thousands of patients sick enough to need hospitalization and sometimes intensive care.  Over the last 30 years, in parts of Africa, Latin America, South America, the Pacific Islands, and the United States, Dr. Madaras has served thousands for wide ranging ailments, including newly emerging diseases such as Zika and most recently COVID-19. This interest began for him in the mid-1980s while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Congo where he learned to recognize schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis, filariasis, strongyloidiasis, and other tropical diseases, and witnessed the start of a newly detected virus soon to be named HIV. 

Dr. Madaras spent his early childhood in Hungary and Sweden, arriving in the United States as refugee in 1968 at the age of seven and eventually became a US citizen. He graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in biochemistry in 1983. He served three years in the Peace Corps in Congo (Zaire) as a regional fisheries coordinator, and then as a PC Country Desk Assistant for Ghana/Liberia/Sierra Leone in Washington, DC. He also worked as a pesticide review manager in the EPA in Washington, with several publications in the Federal Register regarding the removal of chemicals harmful to human health. Dr. Madaras received his MD and Masters in Public Health from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1993, and worked in Gabon, West Africa as an Albert Schweitzer Fellow in pediatrics. Later he worked with the American Refugee Committee on the Congo/Rwandan border during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He also worked on the Hungarian border with the former Yugoslavia in 1995. Since 1996, Dr. Madaras has worked as a board-certified family physician in both inpatient and outpatient medicine in Pediatrics, Adult Medicine and Obstetrics.  He served as a frontline clinician at the Keystone Health Center, a community health center, where he cared for farmworkers and their families and became Assistant Medical Director from 2001 to 2005. In 2005, he became a hospitalist in Chambersburg and Waynesboro Hospitals in south central Pennsylvania, where he continues to work part time. In 2016 he became a Senior Fellow of Hospital Medicine. In 2020, he became a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians (FAAFP). 

In addition, Dr. Madaras has worked as a staff physician in Tuberculosis control at the Pennsylvania State Health Department since 2012, and regularly teaches US-based medical students on an international health rotation in Honduras. Dr. Madaras also teaches hospital medicine to Penn State nurse practitioner and physician assistant students and medical residents at Summit Health. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Penn State College of Medicine as well as the Medical Director of Educational Affairs at WellSpan Summit Health. Dr. Madaras is married with two grown children. He enjoys language, travel, scuba diving, and hiking. He has been a nationally ranked age-group triathlete and completed several marathons and a dozen 50-mile ultra marathons.
 

Amy K. Liebman, MPA, MA (she/her) has devoted her career to improving the safety and health of disenfranchised populations. She joined Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN) in 1999 and currently serves as the Chief Program Officer: Workers, Environment and Climate. With MCN she has established nationally recognized initiatives to improve the health and safety of immigrant workers and their families. She oversees programs ranging from integrating occupational and environmental medicine into primary care to designing worker safety interventions. She is a national leader in addressing worker safety and environmental justice through the community health worker (CHW) model. She has been a strong advocate for worker health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading programs to improve access to care and culturally contextual education for migrants and immigrants. Prior to her current position, she directed numerous environmental health and justice projects along the US-Mexico Border including an award-winning, community-based hygiene education program that reached thousands of families living without water and sewerage services. She has spearheaded policy efforts within the American Public Health Association to support the protection of agricultural workers and served on the federal advisory committee to the EPA Office of Pesticide Programs. Her programs have won several awards including the 2008 EPA Children’s Environmental Health Champion Award and the 2015 National Safety Council Research Collaboration Award. In 2011, Liebman received the Lorin Kerr Award, an APHA/Occupational Health and Safety Section honor recognizing public health professionals for their dedication and sustained efforts to improve the lives of workers. She is a past Chair of APHA’s Occupational Health and Safety. Liebman has been the principal investigator and project manager of numerous government and privately sponsored projects. She has authored articles, bilingual training manuals and other educational materials dealing with environmental and occupational health and migrants. Liebman has a master’s degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Master of Arts from the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Liebman has traveled throughout Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, and Europe. She is an avid soccer fan and loves to spend time with her husband and two sons. Together they spend a lot of time outdoors.