Dr. Charles Rene, born in Haiti, is a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist. He has had a private practice in New Orleans since 1986, and was the former Chief of OB/GYN at Pendleton Methodist Hospital, and currently Associate Clinical Professor at Tulane University, OB/GYN Dept.

Dr. Rene attended medical school and completed his internship at the State University Medical School in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He also studied in Lille, France. His Ob-gyn residency training was done at the Hospital Justinien in Cap-Haitien, Haiti. After emigrating to the US, Dr. Rene followed the law of this country and repeated his internship at Mercy Catholic Medical Center in Philadelphia and another OB/GYN residency at the Jersey City Medical Center in New Jersey. He then started a private practice in New Jersey, while serving as a Clinical Instructor, Assistant Director and Director of the OB/GYN Diagnostic Center.

As a youngster growing up in Port-au-Prince, Dr. Rene became keenly aware of the discrepancy in healthcare access between the privileged upper class and the destitute majority of Haitian people. While attending the medical needs of his less fortunate neighbors, as a medical student, he vowed to, one day, to help remedy this tragic situation.

After a self-imposed exile during the last decade of the Duvalier reign of terror in Haiti, Dr. Rene returned home in 1986 to start work on his adolescent dreams of building a better future for his country.

Since 1986, Dr. Rene has returned three to four times a year on charitable visits to the St. Joseph Hospital/Dispensary in La Vallée de Jacmel. His team provides free medical treatment to the peasants, an underprivileged group for whom he has the deepest respect for carrying the under-compensated burden of Haitian national production. He and his team bring much-needed supplies from the US, provide outpatient care, minor and major surgeries, including emergency C-sections, eye surgery.

Dr. Rene’s first return visit in 1986 was the beginning of a movement to fill the great need for healthcare and education for the less fortunate in Haiti in general, and the Commune (County) of La Vallée de Jacmel in the Department of South-East, his mother's birthplace, in particular. Dr. Rene was the catalyst for the formation of the following humanitarian organizations that provide health, education, financial aid and human rights assistance:

1. The "Association Haitienne de Développement Humain, Inc." (Haitian Association for Human Development - A.H.D.H.), in New Orleans, LA, 1986

2. The "Comité de Support pour la Restoration de la Démocratie" (Support Committee to Restore Democracy - COSURED), New Orleans, LA, 1991

3. The "Haitian Organization for Health Services, Inc." (H.O.H.S.), in Washington, DC, 1993, which offered a blueprint to the government in exile for a modern healthcare system in Haiti after the restoration of the democratic order

4. The "Fondation Ertha Pascal Trouillot” (FONDEPT), in Haiti, 1996, in collaboration with former Haitian Provisional President, Her Excellency, Mme. Ertha Pascal Trouillot, dedicated to changing the unequal socio-economic conditions of Haitian women.

Dr. Rene is the medical director of the Hospital St. Joseph. His humanitarian trips have increased in frequency to four times a year and his core team includes his wife Sandra Birdsall-Rene, RN, plus Critty Hymes, MD, Nicole Vincent, MD, Arshi Michael, MD, Carolle Jean-Murat, MD; Anika Michael, MD; Michael Beauford, and many other volunteers, which at the last count was over 300.