IDIVAL presents the award for his research career to Dr. Luis Rojas Marcos and the award for health cooperation for development to Dr. Pedro Cavadas. The award ceremony will take place during the XIII Inter-regional Meeting on Legal Protection of the Patient organized by the University Menéndez Pelayo International and directed by Jorge Tomillo, Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Cantabria and Joaquín Cayón, head of the legal service of the Ministry of Health of the Government of Cantabria and head of the research group on health law and bioethics. Health will present the awards together with the Director of Management of IDIVAL, Galo Peralta .
After the delivery of this award, Dr. Rojas Marcos has delivered a keynote lecture on 'The impact of COVID-19 on individuals and society: lessons learned and challenges for the future'.
Dr. Luis Rojas Marcos specialized in psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital and New York University. Dr. Rojas investigated the effects of the language barrier on mentally ill immigrants who had difficulty expressing themselves in English. His studies were groundbreaking and showed that the language barrier distorts the communication of these immigrants, to the point that examinations performed by psychiatrists in English without the help of interpreters were unreliable and led to inaccurate diagnoses and erroneous treatment.
The studies of Dr. Rojas contributed to the creation of the Law of Interpreters in the Emergencies and created the Help Project (Project HELP), the first mobile medical service to attend and hospitalize seriously mentally ill homeless and the creation of the first programs specific mental health services for the Hispanic American, Chinese, Russian and Caribbean immigrant communities in the US.
Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, he has received numerous awards for his research work in psychiatry and for his contribution to society.
Currently, Rojas Marcos combines his academic work as a professor of Psychiatry at New York University with the management, as executive director, of Affiliate Doctors of New York.
This year, IDIVAL awards a second prize for his contribution and health cooperation to development to Dr. Pedro Cavadas.
Dr. Cavadas is a specialist in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and since 1994 he has been dedicated to microsurgical reconstruction using the most innovative treatments to provide solutions to patients considered inoperable or who have been left with very difficult to repair sequelae. Dr. Cavadas has received numerous awards and among his professional successes are several cases of limb transplants, being the first surgeon to transplant two hands and to convert a right arm into a left one.
It is worth highlighting the humanitarian work carried out by Dr. Cavadas, thanks to his Foundation created in 2003, he provides modern reconstructive surgery to underprivileged patients in African countries.
