LOUISVILLE, KY, February 10, 2022 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Robert William Prasaad Steiner, MD, PhD, has been included in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
As a child in Louisville, KY, Robert Steiner would look to the night skies from his backyard to see Sputnik in 1957. One day, he hoped to become an astronomer, or to build rocket ships. Later, while an undergraduate student at Purdue University in 1968, he was inspired to go into Medicine by listening to lectures from Life Sciences Professor Dr. J. Alfred Chiscon, who actively taught about new discoveries, like DNA and emerging concepts in genetics. Dr. Steiner entered University of Louisville (UofL) School of Medicine on a scholarship in 1969. Dr. Steiner received the Doctor of Medicine degree from UofL School of Medicine in 1973. He then completed a rotating internship, with emphasis on Critical Care Medicine, at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut in 1974. He completed Residency Training in the new discipline of Family Practice in Louisville in December 1976, under the leadership of Chairman William P. VonderHaar, MD.
Earlier in his Residency in Family Practice at UofL, Dr. Steiner elected to pursue his interests in "alternative medicine". Dr. Steiner attended a month-long, residential elective course for Teachers' Training in Integral Yoga, under the direction of Sri Swami Satchitananda at His Ashram (The Old Wrigley Estate) in Pomfret Center, Connecticut in mid-year 1976. Again, immediately after graduating from the UofL Residency Training Program, Dr. Steiner elected to continue his training in "alternative medicine" education as a student at the New England School of Acupuncture (NESA) in Watertown, MA., under the direction of Dr. James Tin Yau So. Dr. Steiner was honored to be invited to write a short Foreword for the now classic "Book of Acupuncture Points," published by Dr. So in 1984. Dr. Steiner then studied with several Master Teachers from culturally diverse traditional health care systems from Japan, China, India, and Tibet. Multiple perspectives in worldviews provided a portal for new ways of thinking and relating to the world around us, including new avenues for patient care, now to include Family Care and Community Care.
Dr. Steiner commenced his academic career as an Assistant Professor in Family Practice at the UofL School of Medicine in 1978. He was inspired by the new, more inclusive and expansive philosophies underlying Family Medicine, including the new bio-psycho-social model of Family Medicine - in contrast to the more traditional bio-medical model present in most specialties in Western Medicine. Dr. Steiner was impressed by the presence, tone and connections of Chairman William P. VonderHaar, MD. He directed the new Department of Family Practice, then initiated at St. Anthony's Hospital, and affiliated with the UofL School of Medicine. The resident physicians were "real doctors" in the hospital. We cared for patients in accord with our abilities and we called for consultations as we deemed necessary. We delivered babies and we saw patients in the ER and in ICUs. It was a great training and learning environment. Help from faculty and consults was only a phone call away. Later, Dr. Steiner, as a mid-career faculty, wrote an educational grant in 1984 that resulted in changing the name of this department to "UofL Department of Family and Community Medicine" (DFCM). This new and enhanced DFCM, with an expanded scope of interests to include community resources, would later serve as a resource base for developing the new School of Public Health at UofL in 2001.
On a national level, Dr. Steiner was the founder and Chairman of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Task Force on Cross-cultural Experiences. He served as STFM Task Force Chair from 1982 to 1994. The goals were to develop curricular guidelines to introduce an awareness of culturally sensitive health care issues into Family Medicine clinics, and educational and training programs across the USA. He recruited Dr. Arthur Kleinman, MD, Chair and Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard University, as a consultant to the STPM Task Force. STFM Curricular Guidelines from the Task Force were published in 1996, then under the leadership of Dr. Robert Like. Dr. Steiner also represented UofL as a Board member for the newly formed Kentucky Injury Prevention Research Center (KJI'RC) at University of Kentucky from 1996-2003. Dr. Steiner linked the UofL SPHIS with new community organizations, including Kentuckiana Health Collaborative (REC) in 2007. He remains an active alumnus in the KHC.
During two extended sabbatical leaves from UofL in 1988 and 1998, Dr. Steiner attained both the MPH degree and the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health at Chapel Hill. Dr. Steiner maintains kind regards for his Advisor and Mentor at UNC, the late Berton H. Kaplan, PhD. The main area of interest for the dissertation was discerning comparative measurement issues with different questionnaires for assessing scores for quality of life and QALYs.
Dr. Steiner appreciates practical applications of academic training in community settings. As an Epidemiologist, he was asked to serve as Acting Deputy Director of the Jefferson County Health Department (JCHD) during a leadership transition in 1994-1996. Dr. Tom Wallace, MD MPH came out of retirement to again serve as Acting Director, JCHD. During this time, Dr. Steiner assisted Judge Henry Weber, upon his request, to develop and implement a new Drug Court Diversion Treatment program. Dr. Steiner elected to use auricular acupuncture to lessen detoxification symptoms, and he included mandatory daily meditation practice (e.g., shamatha) for the group of convicted felons who were diverted by the court into the treatment program during 1993-1995. These are examples of new methods for approaching socially enmeshed health concerns using culturally different methods.
While Acting Deputy Director at JCHD, Dr. Steiner was primary author and recipient of a competitive grant award from American International Health Alliance (AIHA) and USAID. The purpose of the funded grant in 1998 was to Empower Women's Health in Constantsa, Romania. This grant project proposed using a training-the-trainers model for community development. This international project linked UofL with JCHD and The Humana Foundation, all in unison with the Romanian Team and AIHA & USAID, to develop policies, programs, resources, and methods to improve Women's Health in the port city of Constantsa, Romania. Dr. Daniel Verman and his Team in Constantsa, with AIHA, chose to address Domestic Violence. This project was extraordinarily successful over many years, and it remains active to date! The Romanian Teams promoted their successes to interested groups in neighboring countries of Moldova, Lithuania, and Poland. AIHA helped to disseminate reports of the successes at conferences in London and in Durban, South Africa. Clearly, this project represents a success in international health initiatives in the Eastern Europe Region.
Dr. Steiner then elected to transfer from the renamed UofL Dept. Family and Geriatric Medicine to the newly formed UofL SPHIS in 2005. There, he served as Professor, Department of Health Management and Systems Sciences (HMSS) at UofL SPHIS, until his retirement in January 2019. He served on the Board of Health as representative for SPHIS from 2007-2015. He was mentor, chairman and/or member for multiple dissertation committees for graduate students seeking PhD and Master's degrees. Dr. Robert Esterhay, MD, Chairman Dept. HMSS, lead the comprehensive development of new concepts of "Population Health", that were embodied in a remarkable new textbook, published in 2014 and again in 2017. Dr. Steiner's chapter is available as a stand-alone publication.
In recognition for his dedication to teaching, Dr. Steiner was recently honored with the Exemplary Teaching Award by the Kentucky Academy of Family Physicians in 2021. He plans to continue to learn and write about emerging topics during his retirement. His underlying ambition is to enable a vision: To Realize One Peaceful World within an Emerging Global Enlightened Society!
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