Dialogues in Democracy

Build Back Better–A New Teaching Hospital in Haiti

Forty-eight hours after the devastating earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, David Walton, MD, was in Port-au-Prince to help give medical aid. Sunday, May 15 at 2 pm he will share his experiences and his vision for a new hospital in Haiti with the public in Libertyville.

Dr. Walton will be joined by Marjorie Benton, Chicagoan and senior advisor to Partners in Health. Both are currently working on the construction of the National Teaching Hospital at Mirebalais, a 320-bed, state-of-the-art teaching and referral hospital in central Haiti.

Benton has served as U.S. representative to UNICEF, as well as chair of Save the Children and the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago.

Walton, an Augustana graduate, joined Partners in Health and made his first trip to Haiti the summer of 1998 after his first year at Harvard Medical School. Based on his work with PIH over the last 13 years, he has emerged as a leading expert in the community-based care of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and non-communicable diseases in resource poor settings and he now represents PIH as the Deputy Chief of Mission to Haiti. Most recently Dr. Walton has been involved in the cholera response throughout Haiti.

Since volunteering as a young research assistant to Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of PIH and subject of the Pulitzer Prize winning biography Mountains Beyond Mountains, Walton has spent a considerable amount of time living and working in rural Haiti. As a medical student in 2002, Dr. Walton led a team that transformed a nearly defunct public clinic in Haiti’s Central Plateau into a fully functioning center for primary care, women’s healthcare, and chronic disease management.

In the last year of his residency, Dr. Walton spearheaded a small team that designed and built a small community hospital that resulted in the expansion of clinical care, primary care, and women’s health services in a catchment area of over 60,000 people.

After obtaining his degree from Harvard Medical School in 2003, he earned a master's degree in public health from the Harvard in 2007. He now serves as Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

His research at Harvard Medical School includes exploring emerging infectious diseases in Latin America and expanding medical infrastructure within the public sector in settings of poverty. He has contributed to numerous published articles on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, cholera, and health care systems strengthening.