Medical Matters Weekly Welcomes Population Health Leader

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BENNINGTON, Vt. — The next guest on Medical Matters Weekly is Matilde Castiel, MD, a nationally recognized leader in population health and health equity programs in Worcester, MA. The show airs on Facebook Live at 12 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 31.

The show is produced by Southwestern Vermont Health Care (SVHC) with cooperation from Catamount Access Television (CAT-TV). Viewers can view on facebook.com/svmedicalcenter and facebook.com/CATTVBennington. The show is also available to view or download as a podcast on svhealthcare.org/medicalmatters.

Castiel is the City of Worcester’s commissioner for Health and Human Services, where she oversees the divisions of public health, youth services, human rights and disabilities, veterans’ affairs, and elder affairs. In 2009, Dr. Castiel founded the Latin American Health Alliance (LAHA), a nonprofit organization in Worcester dedicated to combating homelessness and substance use for Latino males.

She was born in Camaguey, Cuba, and raised in California. She completed her medical training at the University of California, San Francisco, after earning a bachelor’s in Cellular and Molecular Biology from California State University, Northridge. 

She completed her residency at UMass Memorial and has worked as a board-certified physician in Internal Medicine in the Worcester community for more than 28 years, including as an associate professor of Internal Medicine, Family Medicine and Psychiatry at UMass Medical School.?

Along with serving as medical director with LAHA, Dr. Castiel has served on the boards of many of Worcester’s nonprofit organizations. She has been honored with many awards, including the Public Citizen of the Year Award from the National Association of Social Workers, Massachusetts Chapter. In 2020 – 2021, Dr. Castiel was a major force behind the city’s Culture of Health Prize, awarded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Medical Matters Weekly addresses all aspects of creating and maintaining a healthy lifestyle for all, including food and nutrition, housing, diversity and inclusion, groundbreaking medical care, exercise, mental health, the environment, research, and government. The show is broadcast on Facebook Live, YouTube, and all podcast platforms.

After the program, the video is available on area public access television stations CAT-TV (Comcast channel 1075) and GNAT-TV's (Comcast channel 1074), as well as on public access stations throughout the United States.


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Bennington College Hosts Author Katie Yee

BENNINGTON, Vt. — Bennington College welcomes alum Katie Yee '17 for a public reading from her debut novel, "Maggie; or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar," on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025, at 7:00 pm in Tishman Lecture Hall. 
 
The event is a part of Bennington's Literature Evenings series. It is free and open to the public. 
 
According to a press release:
 
In Yee's taut, wry debut novel, a Chinese American woman spins tragedy into comedy when her life falls apart. The novel grapples with grief, motherhood, and myths.
 
While at Bennington as a student, Yee was one of the first recipients of the Catherine Morrison Golden '55 P'80 Undergraduate Writing Fellowship to attend the summer residency of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program.
 
"Going back to when Katie was a standout Literature student as an undergraduate, she has always written 'beyond her years,'" faculty member Benjamin Anastas said. "And ever since, Katie has been racking up accomplishment after accomplishment in the literary world." 
 
Yee's writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, No Tokens, The Believer, Washington Square Review, Triangle House, Epiphany, and Literary Hub. She has been awarded fellowships from the Center for Fiction, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and Kundiman. She is the Barnes & Noble 2025 Discover Prize Winner. 
 
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