S. Kalani Brady MD, the primary care physician of the remaining Hansen's disease (leprosy) patients at Kalaupapa, Hawaii, will speak at the National Library of Medicine in honor of St. Damien's Day on April 13, 2012. Dr. Brady's talk is titled, "Kalaupapa and Father Damien: 'Here I am send me.'"

Dr. Brady is an expert on Kalaupapa's legacy, Father Damien (beatified as St. Damien by Pope John Paul II in 1995), and contemporary care issues. Interviews with Dr. Brady as well as a patient and caregiver at Kalaupapa are among the highlights of NLM's current exhibition, Native Voices: Native Peoples' Concepts of Health and Illness (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices), on display at NLM through fall of 2013. There is also a section about Kalaupapa's legacy within the exhibition.

St. Damien's Day is an annual Hawaiian statewide holiday in commemoration of the priest who pioneered housing, food distribution, and health care for Kalaupapa's residents at the end of the 19th century. From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, about 8,000 persons with Hansen's disease were exiled to Kalaupapa, a remote peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The plight of Kalaupapa's patients in the late 19th - early 20th century was chronicled by authors Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London.

Dr. Brady is an associate professor, John A. Burns School of Medicine, Department of Native Hawaiian Health, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and is chief of the medical staff, Kalaupapa Clinic. Dr. Brady is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and is board certified in internal medicine. Dr. Brady is featured in a periodic segment that answers patient health questions on a Honolulu commercial television station and is also a well-known musician in Hawaii.

For more information go to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/lecture_kalani_brady.html