NFF Gold Medal Recipients
Biography
Born and raised in Amsterdam, N.Y. in a family of seven children, Dr. Tom G. Catena attended Brown University, studying mechanical engineering. He excelled both in the classroom and on the football field, winning honors as an Honorable Mention All-American and All-Ivy League nose guard while becoming a Rhodes Scholar candidate.
Upon graduation, Catena decided to pursue a medical career, and he enrolled at the Duke University School of Medicine in 1988 on a U.S. Navy scholarship. He entered the United States Navy in 1992, becoming a Naval Flight Surgeon. After fulfilling his Navy obligation, he completed a residency in family medicine at Union Hospital in Terre Haute, Ind. During his residency, he began his medical foray into the developing world with mission trips to Guyana and Honduras. In 1999, he began his service as a missionary doctor, becoming a volunteer physician with the Catholic Medical Mission Board at hospitals in Mutomo and Nairobi, Kenya.
In 2007, Catena became the medical director and sole physician at Mother of Mercy Hospital in the Nuba Mountain region of the Sudan, a country where civil war has been raging for years. He established the facility with Bishop Macram Gassis, and on opening day in 2008, he treated more than 200 patients. Since then, he has continued at a relentless pace, dealing with everything from malaria and leprosy to brain surgery. His intense and unyielding responsibilities extend to training nurses and hospital administration.
In 2011, the civil war escalated and conditions at the hospital became more intense. In addition to those wounded by the fighting, many of them children, Catena and his staff faced a particularly severe malaria outbreak. He was given the choice to evacuate, but he refused, stating, “As the only doctor in the only hospital in the region, I could not leave in good conscience.”
A young Washington, D.C. doctor, who worked with Catena for five weeks in the Sudan, chronicled his experiences in an essay, “Always on Call.” The Lancet, the premier British medical journal, published the essay in 2008, claiming the Wakley Prize as the top article on a clinical topic of international health importance. He was named a “Catholic Hero” by Catholic Digest in 2010, and he has been quoted in numerous international publications, reporting on the ongoing civil war in the Sudan. Catena’s many accolades include the 2013 Brown Alumni Association Williams Rogers Award and being recognized as a 2013 Ivy Football Association Honoree.
