Health Network: A Care Coordination Program for Patients Who Move During Treatment

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 worked 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.
 

Elizabeth Gonzalez Ibarra (she/her/ella) works as a Health Network Associate at MCN. Originally from Austin, TX, Her passion for aiding the Latinx community led her to blend her interests in Spanish and public health, aiming to make a meaningful impact.
 
In her role, Gonzalez supports immigrants, migrants, and asylum seekers by linking them with medical and social services, ensuring their continuous care despite their mobility. Since 2022, she has also been involved in an ongoing outreach project with Farm Aid, serving as a Spanish Hotline operator to address mental health stigma in Latinx communities, starting with farmers and farmworkers and connect these workers to needed resources. Her work with the hotline has earned media attention, and she has been featured in several publications for this work. 
 
Gonzalez earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish with a minor in Public Health from Texas State University in 2021, and she initially joined MCN as an intern that same year. Outside of work, she enjoys reading, nature walks, and spending time with loved ones.