Board of Directors and Executive Director

Linda Bartusek has over twenty years of nonprofit accounting experience and passion for chronic pelvic pain conditions to her role as Board Treasurer.

Over the past twenty years she has worked for various nonprofits, including Catholic schools, Benet Hill Monastery as well as for Stratmoor Hills Water Division where she served in Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, database administrator, payroll and Internal Accountant and bookkeeper positions.

Linda worked at Benet HIll Monastery for 14 years Benet Hill Monastery as their Internal Accountant—Assistant to Treasurer, where her tasks included payables, payroll, receipts and cash tracking, program student accounts, banking reconciliations, government taxes and reports, financial statements, budgeting, investment tracking and reporting, chart of accounts creation, computer program conversions, filing, and working with numerous departments including program managers, Finance and Mission Advancement.

In addition to serving Bridge for Pelvic Pain as a volunteer Board member, Linda is a volunteer at Associated Design Professionals, Inc. where she mutli-tasks with ease between receptionist, billing, receipts, payables, typing of proposals, reports, correspondence and filing duties.

Linda holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration and Economics from Milligan College, TN

Robert Echenberg, M.D.
Dr. Echenberg is a founding Board Member of Bridge for Pelvic Pain and also serves as the Director of its Advisory Committee. Dr. Echenberg did his undergraduate work at Brown University, medical training at Jefferson Medical College, and his residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He began private practice in Bethlehem, PA in the early 1970’s, became board certified, and soon realized that much of what he needed to know concerning women’s health had not been taught in those otherwise excellent programs. He feels now that much of what he subsequently needed to know had to be searched for and learned on his own.

Along with aiding women through more than 2500 pregnancies and deliveries, doing the usual gynecologic medical and surgical care on thousands of others, he became the first regional physician to become the medical advisor for LaMaze child birth classes, helped start the first integrated course in human sexuality at Lehigh University, and worked diligently to advocate for women’s reproductive rights and child birthing options in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley (Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton). He joined the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT), became involved with the American College of Nurse Midwives, and sponsored the first nurse-midwifery birthing center in the region, as well.

Dr. Echenberg’s interests then expanded into parent-infant bonding, issues of attachment and loss, medical ethics, sexual dysfunctional counseling for his patients and their partners, and was even interviewed on national television for his involvement in one of the country’s first support groups for families suffering early miscarriage. He later established one of the original and few community hospital peri-natal ethics committees in the country in order to help families deal with the difficult decision making surrounding seriously ill and dying newborns. One set of his parents wrote “The Long Dying of Baby Andrew”, following the tragic loss of their child, which helped to change policies of parental involvement in neo-natal intensive care units throughout the country.

Dr. Echenberg’s passion for integrative care in women’s health now continues with his creation of one of the first privately owned multi-disciplinary practices specializing in assessment, diagnosis and treatment of chronic pelvic, genital and sexual pain disorders. He feels that his collaboration with Susan Bilheimer, a sufferer of CPP, in the writing of “Secret Suffering: How Women’s Sexual and Pelvic Pain Affects Their Relationships”, and the creation of his website www.instituteforwomeninpain.org, all continue his career choices in helping “women in pain”. In 2010 and 2011, he had also been on the board of the International Pelvic Pain Society (IPPS – www.pelvicpain.org)

Dr. Echenberg has more recently, in 2012, been working on several other projects regarding pelvic and genital pain disorders. Together with 4 other professionals he has est P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }A:link { color: rgb(0, 0, 255); } ablished a new entity called the “Alliance for Pelvic Pain” - www.allianceforpelvicpain.com. This group has already carried out the first national weekend retreat for patients and their partners in Bethlehem, PA in the Spring of 2013. He also is working with several others on a DVD which will be a teaching tool for young women to learn about self-help techniques for genital and sexual pain disorders. www.paindownthere.com This should be available in the early part of 2015.

In addition Dr. Echenberg is expanding knowledge on pelvic pain to the school nurses of Pennsylvania, sports departments and athletes at various colleges and organizations in the Lehigh Valley of PA, and he has made contact with professionals at the National Institute of Health (NIH) and epidemiologists at Harvard and Oxford in England to begin a prospective research initiative into Dr. Echenberg’s practice of pelvic and sexual pain. He has also lectured on pelvic and sexual pain at The Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton, Pennsylvania and plans to help promote education on Interstitial Cystitis in that community in 2014.

Dr. Echenberg Describes his Program for Chronic Pelvic and Genital Pain

In 2001, I was asked to design a fresh approach to assessment, diagnosis and management of female chronic pelvic pain (CPP). Too many young women were getting invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that were either not diagnostic or in fact very misleading. My investigation into these issues soon began teaching me that the typical gynecologic reasons for pain such as endometriosis, ovarian cysts, adhesions, pelvic inflammatory disease, STDs, etc. were only the tip of the iceberg regarding CPP. I soon learned that the science of pain transmission and processing has been exploding over the past 10 to 15 years.

In short, what I found was that studies were indicating that CPP in women (and indeed men as well), was a much more complex array of multiple “triggers”, both visceral (bladder, lower bowel, and reproductive organs), and “somatic” (all of the rest of the pelvic structures) including all of the muscles, ligaments and nerves in the pelvic region.

Our program now is actually a pain management program for what has been described in the literature as a chronic regional pain syndrome (CRPS) of the pelvis. According to the International Pelvic Pain Society (www.pelvicpain.org), CPP is one of the most common medical problems of reproductive aged women, affecting up to 15 – 20% between the ages of 18 to 50. Shockingly, 61% of CPP remains incompletely or incorrectly diagnosed, and millions of women are referred from specialist to specialist and are often led to believe that the problem is “in their heads”.

We see a great many young women (and men) from all over the US and get continual requests from all over the world for care and education about a variety of pelvic, genital and sexual pain disorders. These include Painful Bladder Syndrome/Interstitial Cystitis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Generalized Vulvodynia and Vestibulodynia, Chronic Pelvic Floor Dysfunction (pelvic floor myalgia), pelvic peripheral neuropathies such as pain associated with the ilioinguinal/iliohypogastric (groin), and pudendal (vulvar) nerves, myofascial trigger points, Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAD), and secondary but often severe emotional diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, frustration, anger, and increasing loss of self.

Because we specialize in this type of pain, we see many serious consequences of delays in diagnosis. Importantly, close to 90% of CPP sufferers have some degree of sexual pain as well, thereby affecting their intimate relationships, causing increasing stress and more serious emotional sequelae. Our multi-modality and multi-disciplinary approach is still very effective, but I hope to help develop a protocol for earlier intervention in younger women.

Robert J. Echenberg, MD, FACOG

Co-author, “Secret Suffering: How Women’s Sexual and Pelvic Pain Affects their Relationships”
Dr. Echenberg practices in Bethlehem, PA and NYC.

office@drechenberg.com

www.instituteforwomeninpain.com

Karen Liberi, MPT has been practising as a physical therapist since 1996 after graduating from the University of Delaware. She worked at National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington DC treating a variety of patient populations. Participating in many continuing education courses, she developed her skills as a manual therapist focusing primarily on the spine.

An opportunity arose for her to help start the physical therapy component of the Washington Continence Center in which she worked closely with a urogynecologist, urologists and colo-rectal surgeons to help their patients with a variety of pelvic floor dysfunctions. This is where her passion grew to treat women’s and men’s health patients with bladder control and pelvic pain issues.

Karen moved to Maine in 2003 and worked for Holistic Physical Therapy, the largest outpatient women’s health clinic in New England from 2004-2009. As her husband had a job opportunity in Adrian, MI, she and her family moved to the Midwest in 2009. She has developed Beyond Better Pelvic Rehabilitation Center in Maumee OH with continued focus on improving the health and quality of life of her patients presenting with pelvic pain, incontinence and pelvic floor dysfunction.

She provides a caring environment which she feels is important in effectively treat her patients. The one on one treatment sessions are essential to allow her patients optimal time and opportunity to begin the healing process and aid with improving their quality of life by minimizing their symptoms. Through her ability to integrate her manual skills, knowledge of the spine, knowledge of pelvic floor dysfunction and knowledge of core strengthening through Pilates, she is able to customize patient care and improve their function. She is committed to her patients and will work closely with the doctors and other health care professionals to ensure a team approach for optimal outcomes.

Karen is a founding Board Member of Bridge for Pelvic Pain.

Carin Willis is the Founder and Executive Director of Bridge for Pelvic Pain and also serves as the interim Board Chair. No stranger to chronic pain she has suffered from migraines, TMJ, hyper-mobility syndrome and IBS since childhood and in her early twenties developed Interstitial Cystitis (IC), vulvodynia and dyspareunia. She suffered in silence with chronic pain conditions while feeling both isolated and devastated by the severity of these chronic pain conditions and the impact they had on her quality of life. After finding some relief after seven long years of work utilizing an integrative approach she felt compelled to 'pay it forward' to connect chronic pelvic pain and IC patients with helpful resources, integrative doctors, and stories from other patient advocates by creating a website and blog www.icpbssupport.com Carin's support website began to garner national and international attention due to its positive and educational approach to these conditions. Eventually, Carin was sought out for numerous interviews amongst doctors and experts within the chronic pelvic pain community.

After three years of connecting with chronic pelvic pain patients across the global, Carin felt a calling in her heart to further expand upon the work of connecting chronic pelvic patients with resources, education with a hope-filled message. She began a journey of educating herself about how best to serve this global community of chronic pelvic patients-a journey that took her thousands of miles to shadow a nationally respected MD who treats these conditions with an integrative approach; spending countless hours researching the many needs of chronic pain patients; meeting medical experts, patients, patient advocates and care-givers who are now an integral part of what has become Bridge for Pelvic Pain a 501 c (3) non-profit based in Colorado Springs, CO.

Carin brings a breadth of experience from working for the past fifteen years in positions ranging from Human Resources, Project Management, sales and business management, all of which are skills necessary to lead a new non-profit. She holds a BS in Business Management with a minor in Project Management and is a Professional Member of the Association for Fund-raising Professionals (AFP) Southern Colorado. Carin recently joined the International Pain Foundation as an iPain Delegate to further awareness about chronic pelvic pain.

Aside from the business aspect of founding and the day to day operations of Bridge for Pelvic Pain, she hopes that anyone touched by chronic pelvic pain conditions will have access to resources, education and hope regardless of age, gender, race, city or country in which they reside. Bridge for Pelvic Pain's aim is to be the bridge connecting chronic pelvic pain patients with each other and with the integrative doctors, specialists and resources.