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Upcoming International Work:
Once Covid-19 travel restrictions lift, Dr. Mazzola plans to to travel to Guatemala with Developing Faces. Dr. Catherine Mazzola has been on neurosurgical missionary trips to Kenya.
Dr. Mazzola donates and supports NREF (Neurosurgery Research & Education Foundation). Through her generosity there will be training of two neurosurgeons who will then provide care for thousands of Kenyan children and adults.
Dr. Catherine Mazzola started the Leland Albright fund with NREF to help Dr. Albright’s missionary work in Kenya. Fund purpose is to support neurosurgery resident & fellow education in Africa.
A. Leland Albright, MD, FAANS(L), graduated from Louisiana State University (LSU) in 1965 and the LSU School of Medicine in 1969. He pursued an internship in internal medicine at Vanderbilt University Hospital and a year of general surgery residency at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Albright then served for three years in the U.S. Public Health Service as a clinical associate in neurosurgery at the National Institutes of Health. In 1978, he completed his neurosurgical residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) under the chairmanship of Peter Jannetta, MD, DSc, FAANS(L). After serving on the faculty of the University of Louisville for two years, Dr. Albright returned to UPMC and the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP) in 1981.
Dr Albright became chief of pediatric neurosurgery in 1992 and professor of neurosurgery in 1993. His clinical research interests in the initial years at CHP involved clinical trials for pediatric brain tumors through the Children's Cancer Group. Dr. Albright then developed the use of intrathecal baclofen to treat children with spasticity and secondary dystonia and established a multi-disciplinary spasticity and movement disorders center that drew referrals of children from throughout the United States. An endowed chair in pediatric neurosurgery was established in his honor in 2002.
He moved to the University of Wisconsin Health Center in 2006 where he developed a spasticity and movement disorders clinic. Leaving U.S. academic practice in 2010, he moved to Kijabe, Kenya, as a medical missionary to do and to teach pediatric neurosurgery. In Kenya, he taught two pediatric neurosurgery fellows and 15 neurosurgery residents from the University of Nairobi. Dr. Albright and his colleagues performed more than 5,000 operations before he returned to the United States in 2015.
Dr. Albright was the senior editor of the first and subsequent editions of the textbook Principles and Practice of Pediatric Neurosurgery, which has become the standard resource for the subspecialty worldwide. He has been a visiting professor at 30 academic centers in the United States and abroad. He was active in the AANS/CNS Section on Pediatric Neurological Surgery and the American Board of Pediatric Neurosurgery. In 2012, Dr. Catherine Mazzola nominated Dr. Albright for the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) Humanitarian Award, which he received with honor.
https://www.nref.org/ways-to-give/Honor-Your-Mentor-Funds/A-Leland-Albright-Fund
Dr. Collins is also no stranger to international neurosurgery travel. Committed to a principle of service wherever there is a need, Dr. Collins has provided missionary pediatric neurosurgical work at the Kajabe Medical Center in Kenya and in Thailand he has taught basic neurosurgical procedures to missionary surgeons from throughout Southeast Asia.
He has also treated children with complex neurosurgical problems brought to Virginia from Central America by the World Pediatric Project organization.
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