Search results for ""author tony hiss""

Long Road from Quito presents a fascinating portrait of David Gaus, an unlikely trailblazer with deep ties to the University of Notre Dame and an even more compelling postgraduate life. Gaus is co-founder, with his mentor Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., of Andean Health and Development (AHD), an organization dedicated to supporting health initiatives in South America. Tony Hiss traces the trajectory of Gaus's life from an accounting undergraduate to a medical doctor committed to bringing modern medicine to poor, rural communities in Ecuador. When he began his medical practice in 1996, the best strategy in these areas consisted of providing preventive measures combined with rudimentary clinical services. Gaus, however, realized he had to take on a much more sweeping approach to best serve sick people in the countryside, who would have to take a five-hour truck ride to Quito and the nearest hospital. He decided to bring the hospital to the patients. He has now done so twice, building two top-of-the-line hospitals in Pedro Vicente Maldonado and Santo Domingo, Ecuador. The hospitals, staffed only by Ecuadorians, train local doctors through a Family Medicine residency program, and are financially self-sustaining. His work with AHD is recognized as a model for the rest of Latin America, and AHD has grown into a major player in global health, frequently partnering with the World Health Organization and other international agencies. With a charming, conversational style that is a pleasure to read, Hiss shows how Gaus's vision and determination led to these accomplishments, in a story with equal parts interest for Notre Dame readers, health practitioners, medical anthropologists, Latin American students and scholars, and the general public.

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The remaining corner of an old farm, unclaimed by developers. The brook squeezed between housing plans. Abandoned railroad lines. The stand of woods along an expanded highway. These are the outposts of what was once a larger pattern of forests and farms, the "last landscape." According to William H. Whyte, the place to work out the problems of our metropolitan areas is within those areas, not outside them. The age of unchecked expansion without consequence is over, but where there is waste and neglect there is opportunity. Our cities and suburbs are not jammed; they just look that way. There are in fact plenty of ways to use this existing space to the benefit of the community, and The Last Landscape provides a practical and timeless framework for making informed decisions about its use. Called "the best study available on the problems of open space" by the New York Times when it first appeared in 1968, The Last Landscape introduced many cornerstone ideas for land conservation, urging all of us to make better use of the land that has survived amid suburban sprawl. Whyte's pioneering work on easements led to the passage of major open space statutes in many states, and his argument for using and linking green spaces, however small the areas may be, is a recommendation that has more currency today than ever before.

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