Patch Adams is a Clown who Became a Doctor
To Bring his Hospital to the World 

After he graduated from the Medical College of Virginia in 1971, Patch began what would become his life-long mission: The Gesundheit Institute. The pilot project, which ran from 1971 through 1983, saw over 15,000 patients visiting his large 6-bedroom communal home, shared with friends, fellow doctors, and patients.  To support this radical hospital, friends took outside work to support the love that comes from helping others. As the pilot drawn to a close, Patch realized he needed to make his dream hospital a reality. 

No one was going to “give” him a hospital – Patch had to go out into the world and find the hospital of his dreams. After 36 years, Patch remains energized and ready to take on the medical cure-focused for-profit industry. 

Imagine:

• a free hospital that eliminates 90% of the cost of healthcare 
• a hospital that isn’t filled with anxiety about how to treat patients
• a hospital that allows the doctors to connect with the patients at an intimate level
• a hospital that treats the care-givers and care-receivers as friends
• a hospital that welcomes complementary practices, rather than shuns them.

Patch lectures and performs over 200 days of the year. He has traveled throughout the world delivering his message of peace and love while challenging the audience to love and care about themselves, their community, and our planet.  Every year, Patch leads 9 different missions to lead clowns into impoverished communities, war zones, refugee camps, and disaster areas. Patch’s dedication toward clowning has sparked a movement that has grown to independent clown groups in 120 countries.

Come, join the fun!

As Translational Nutrition Program Manager of the Plants for Human Health Institute (PHHI), Cheri is responsible for developing and disseminating programs related to research affecting health and wellness.

Her particular interests include prevention and disease mitigation through diet change and maintenance. She has experience as a Primary Care Nurse Practitioner in underserved communities.

The PHHI is part of a collaborative, the North Carolina Research Campus, that works to empower human health through nutrition. Eight universities, the David H. Murdock Research Institute, companies and entrepreneurs focus research and development on safer, more nutritious crops, healthier foods and precision nutrition.

Emily Ho, PhD
Endowed Chair and Director
Linus Pauling Institute
Professor, College of Public Health and Human Sciences
Oregon State University

Emily Ho is the Endowed Chair and Director of the Linus Pauling Institute, and former Director of the Moore Family Center for Whole Grain Foods, Nutrition & Preventive Health. She is also a full professor, in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University. 

Dr. Ho obtained her BS in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, obtained her doctorate in Nutrition Sciences at Ohio State University in 2000.  After a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Bruce Ames, at the University of California, Berkeley, she joined the nutrition faculty at Oregon State University in 2003.     

Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms by which nutrient status and healthy foods affect the initiation and/or progression of chronic diseases.  

An important strength to her approach in her research is maintaining a mechanistic focus on diet/environment interactions, and encouraging to work in multi-disciplinary teams to facilitate the translation of cellular mechanistic studies to impact human populations.  Her work has helped drive dietary requirements and recommendations for micronutrients such as zinc for communities with susceptibility to poor nutrition.  She also has strong interest in phytochemicals derived from cruciferous vegetables in cancer prevention.  She has strong commitment to engaging and facilitating nutrition and diet-focused translational research projects with basic scientists, clinicians, policy-makers and communities, and involving experiential learning with students and postdoctoral researchers.  

Kevin S. LaBar is a Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University. He earned his Ph.D. at New York University and completed postdoctoral studies at Yale University.

Dr. LaBar was an Instructor of Neurology at Northwestern University Medical School prior to joining the Duke faculty in 1999.

His research seeks to understand how emotions are processed and regulated in the brain, and how they bias memory and other cognitive functions. He addresses these questions using behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging approaches in healthy adults and in psychiatric populations.

Dr. LaBar has published over 175 journal articles and book chapters. He received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and Young Investigator awards from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He serves on the editorial boards of Science Advances, Behavioral Neuroscience, and Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. His research is supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Mark Rosenberg received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1988. Dr. Rosenberg completed his residency in emergency medicine where he was awarded “Resident and Teacher of the Year.” Dr. Rosenberg has been director/assistant director of several emergency departments, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

While staying active in academic emergency medicine, Dr. Rosenberg began contemplating methods to improve healthcare, such as how to improve treatment of the cause of medical disorders, rather than just treating the symptoms. In the late 1990s, Dr. Rosenberg reviewed the literature regarding obesity drugs and subsequently developed a novel drug for the treatment of obesity, for which he filed a patent.

Dr. Rosenberg’s drug development for obesity was sidetracked, when his mother presented to his emergency department with chest pain. Dr. Rosenberg diagnosed his mother with non-small cell lung cancer, that had metastasized to the liver, spleen, and bilateral adrenal glands. Dr. Rosenberg consulted with oncologists at preeminent cancer centers, where he learned the following: for most solid cancers (as opposed to leukemias and lymphomas), we have extended survival by approximately 2 months over the past 20 years.

Dr. Rosenberg’s career path swiftly and abruptly changed course, toward the study of cancer. He began studying tumor metabolism and then became the program director for the first Integrative Cancer Fellowship in the U.S.

Dr. Rosenberg began evaluating the literature regarding drugs that target cancer stem cells (CSC). CSCs, which are resistant to most cancer treatments (including chemotherapy), are the primary reason for cancer treatment failure. The literature revealed that salinomycin, an antibiotic that has been used in chicken and pig feed for over 30 years, exquisitely targets and kills CSC. Although exciting, there are two problems with this drug:

1. Neurotoxicity 
2. Patent expired long ago, so there is no financial incentive to sponsor a clinical trial.

Dr. Rosenberg took 2 patients with end-stage small cell lung cancer and treated them outside of the U.S. with salinomycin, achieving complete remission in both cases. As of the time this article was written, the first patient has been in remission for 8.5 years and the second for 7.5 years.

Dr. Rosenberg and his team started a pharmaceutical company and partnered with a spinout from Harvard, with the goal being to reduce toxicity of salinomycin, while improving its selectivity for cancer cells, thereby sparing normal cells. The animal studies looked extremely promising, so Dr. Rosenberg merged his company with another pharmaceutical company, with the goal being to initiate a human trial with the first cancer stem cell-targeting drug, to be initiated at the end of 2022.

Finally, Dr. Rosenberg recently filed a provisional patent on a device to eliminate circulating tumor clusters from the bloodstream. If successful, this device may mitigate and potentially halt the seeding of tumor cells, thereby terminating the metastatic process. The first experiment has just begun at the Univ. Michigan.

Dr. Rosenberg’s career path has clearly taken an unusual turn, but he has dedicated his life to making a difference in the lives of those effected by cancer.

Dr. Saltiel received her medical degree from New York Medical College before completing her internal medicine residency at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas and subsequently a cardiology fellowship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC.

She practiced cardiovascular medicine for 14 years in the Army, and her Army service culminated at Fort Gordon, Georgia where she served as the Chief of Cardiology and the Southeast Regional Consultant in Cardiovascular Disease.

Following 20 years as an Interventional Cardiologist, she practiced Phlebology and Functional Medicine in Fort Smith, AR. Recently Dr. Saltiel served as the Vice-President, Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer for Genova Diagnostics and is currently the Medical Director of Peak Health and Wellness in Asheville, NC. Dr. Saltiel has received multiple teaching awards and continues to teach and mentor physicians. She is a member of the CardioServe Research Panel of the American College of Cardiology and serves as a consultant for Precision Analytical. Most recently, she along with Mark Newman, owner of Precision Analytical, presented abstracts at the 2021 North American Menopause’s annual conference. Dr. Saltiel is a coauthor on multiple hormone-related papers that are in the process of being published in peer-reviewed journals.

Beth Shirley is a Registered Pharmacist and Certified Clinical Nutritionist who has developed unique expertise as both a pharmacist and certified clinical nutritionist during a distinguished 40+ year career. Her specialties include stress-induced hormonal imbalance, intestinal dysfunction, autoimmune and chronic inflammatory issues, detoxification, nutrigenomics and super-normal oxidative stress.  

She has been a pioneer at the cutting edge of the evolution of what has now come to be known as “Integrative Pharmacy” …the junction between traditional pharmacy and the clinical use of nutritional supplementation.

Since 2009, Beth has worked in close collaboration with some of the world’s leading thought leaders in the field of nitric oxide research. Through this, she has developed an in- depth knowledge on the topic and its potential beneficial applications in multiple aspects of patient care.

In addition, she has worked closely with the scientific community and cutting-edge companies working on innovative nutritional ingredients and approaches to their use for a variety of life’s challenges.

Mary Anne Tierney, RN, MPH is the Executive Director of SafeTech NC, a non-profit sharing why and how to use technology safely. She is certified as an Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist with the Building Biology Institute and provides EMF coaching, assessments and mitigation through her Western NC-based company, Blue Ridge EMF Solutions.

Specializing in practical, quantitative EMF solutions, Mary Anne has presented for multiple clinical practices and for two CME conferences in 2021: the EMF Medical Conference 2021 and the Scientific Symposium of the International & American Association of Clinical Nutritionists.

As a clinician, she has specialized in health behavior change for the past 30 years, working at the individual, community, and policy levels, first as a public health educator, then as an RN in acute care, and later as a psychiatric nurse, caring for those in early recovery from addiction. She bases her EMF health coaching on the classic Stages of Change and Motivational Interviewing.

Mary Anne holds a B.A. in Communications from SUNY Buffalo, an Associate Degree in Nursing from Asheville-Buncombe Technical College in NC, and a Master’s in Public Health from the University of South Carolina.