Dr. Joshua White was born in Iowa and has lived in several U.S. states, but his most recent work has taken him south of the border to earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
Dr. White is the community health initiative director for Worldwide Village Inc., a non-profit focused on improving the health and education of children and families in poverty-stricken nations. As such, he’s spent the last seven months on and off in Haiti running a 50-bed mobile hospital with two operating rooms and an emergency department in Léogâne, the epicenter of the devastating magnitude 7.0 quake.
When not in Haiti, Dr. White has worked for the last six years as an emergency physician in Minnesota for the Emergency Physicians Professional Association, a 130-member physician group providing emergency care for six hospitals.
Dr. White served as Emergency Department vice chair and assistant medical director for a 40-bed emergency department at Unity Hospital in Fridley, Minn. He also served as past complaints director and quality assurance director at the same hospital and on a variety of committees addressing quality, Medical Staff leadership, critical care and more.
Dr. White attended Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, earning a bachelor’s degree in biology, with chemistry and psychology minors, and magna cum laude honors. He went on to the University of Iowa College of Medicine, where he earned his doctor of medicine degree. His residency in emergency medicine was at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass. And Dr. White will soon earn a master’s degree in business administration in health care from the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.
He is board certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine and a fellow with the American Academy of Emergency Medicine.
He comes to Vermont to join Gifford Medical Center in Randolph full-time, for the opportunity to live closer to family in western Massachusetts and to raise his own family in a rural community.
“I’m just excited to be here,” said Dr. White, who thrives on the unpredictability of emergency medicine. “I like not knowing what I’m going to do next. It suits my personality.”
Dr. White and his family are now living in Randolph. He is married with a young daughter, Corrine, and a second child on the way. In his free time, Dr. White enjoys downhill skiing, hiking, running, reading and his work in Haiti.
That mobile hospital in Léogâne will be moved in September, but Dr. White and hundreds of other volunteers like him will continue doing clinics in the mountain regions and southern peninsula of Haiti with a focus on continuity of care.