What we do
Our research activities and collaborations take place around the world. Search activities by faculty name, department, region or interest area.
If you are a faculty member with interests in global health and would like to be included on our list, please email emkenney@email.sc.edu.
| Faculty | Department | Region | Interest Area | Keywords (hidden column) |
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Communication Sciences and Disorders |
Western Pacific |
As chair of the International Cluttering Association, Dr. Adams is on the Planning Committee for the World Congress on Fluency Disorders in Hiroshima, Japan in the summer of 2018. He also is collaborating with Dr. Nan Ratner at the University of Maryland, who is coordinating efforts to establish the Fluency Bank. This bank should help speech-language pathologists, logopedists, etc. worldwide better recognize and identify cluttering, which is often misdiagnosed as stuttering. |
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School of Medicine |
Africa |
Point-of-care ultrasound in low-resource settings, tropical medicine (dengue fever, malaria, soil-transmitted helminths) |
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Curtis Elliott |
School of Medicine |
China |
Dr. Elliott worked as a primary care physician and educator in Shanxi Province, China from 1997 - 2017. Special interests include tuberculosis, hepatitis B, and working effectively within a local healthcare system different from that of one's home country. He is currently a clinical assistant professor working with resident physicians specializing in Family Medicine. |
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School of Medicine |
Honduras, Tanzania, Indonesia, Nepal |
Jeff Hall is a clinical professor of Family and Preventive medicine with particular interest in primary and maternity care in low-resource areas. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Americas, West Africa |
Dr. Baker's primary research interests include drugs, germs, and justice. As an infectious disease epidemiologist, he studies HIV and other drug-related harms as a consequence of injection drug use among populations impacted by exposures to the criminal justice system (policing, incarceration). He is particularly interested in drug policy and its enforcement as a structural determinant of health. He has experience implementing and evaluating harm reduction and HIV prevention interventions in the US, Mexico, and Canada. He also has experience in infectious disease outbreak investigations and surveillance, including the 2014-16 West Africa Ebola Outbreak in Sierra Leone. |
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Guoshuai Cai |
Environmental Health Sciences |
Europe, Asia, Africa |
Dr. Guoshuai Cai’s research interests include environmental exposure, genomics and mechanisms of complex human diseases such as lung cancer, colon cancer and scleroderma. He is currently studying the impact of smoking on gene expression, methylation, mutation, immune microenvironment and microbial populations in normal lung tissues and lung tumors, across European, Asian and African populations. He also developed a statistical method to infer intercontinental ancestry from DNA polymorphism data. He collaborates with researchers in Canada and China. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Middle East & North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa |
Hala Ghattas' research agenda centers on the links between inequity, food insecurity, malnutrition and poor health, and on the development and evaluation of interventions to address these. Her work has focused on rural, marginalized or refugee populations in Low- and Middle-income countries. Dr Ghattas has designed large population surveys, community-based interventions and evaluations, and used mixed methods and digital technology tools to advance both the implementation and translation of her research. |
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Environmental Health Sciences |
Europe |
Dr. Devin Bowes focuses her research on using wastewater as a tool to assess community health in a manner that is inclusive, minimally invasive, and cost-effective in order to reduce health disparities; a field often referred to as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). Dr. Bowes has experience applying this methodology in a diverse range of urban and rural settings across the globe, with a particular focus on exploring how WBE could be utilized in the context of forced displacement and migration to improve health and influence policy change. She is currently part of a multidisciplinary team spearheading an integrative WBE project along the Western Balkan Route, with plans to continue to expand this work in other migratory regions. |
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Environmental Health Sciences |
Global |
Dr. Andrea Jilling is a soil biogeochemist with research interests in soil organic matter dynamics. She examines how agricultural practices influence the climate resilience, health, and sustainability of soil systems with a particular focus on carbon and nitrogen cycling. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Africa, South America, South Asia |
Dr. Nandita Perumal is an epidemiologist and an applied public health researcher experienced in leading multidisciplinary research to improve maternal, newborn, and child health in vulnerable populations. Her current projects focus on evaluating the effect of timing of antiretroviral therapy initiation during pregnancy on infant and child development; evidence synthesis for low hemoglobin as a risk factor for adverse maternal and newborn outcomes; and in understanding the mechanisms in the pathophysiology of preeclampsia and preterm birth in low and middle-income country settings. Dr. Perumal is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at USC, an affiliate faculty member at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, and a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she completed her postdoctoral research. She received her PhD and MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Toronto and holds a BSc in Human Nutrition from McGill University, Canada. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Sub-Saharan Africa |
Dr. Bornstein conducts research in sexual and reproductive health, particularly around fertility, infertility, and contraceptive use. Her recent collaborations includes a cohort study focused on reproductive decision making, behavior, and perceived infertility in Malawi and a study evaluating the impact of an entertainment education program on health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors in West Africa. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Americas |
Melissa Nolan's research interests lie in infectious diseases and health disparities. Her work focuses on patient-oriented public health approaches to tackle diseases that disproportionately affect the impoverished. Her current projects focus on the clinical epidemiologic characterization of Chagas disease in the US, Mexico, and Central America, developing a remote sensing model for prioritizing mosquito breeding habitats for insecticide spraying in resource-limited areas, clarifying the immunologic response to polyparasitism in pediatric populations, and refining trichomoniasis patient profiles of at-risk adolescents. |
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Communication Sciences and Disorders |
Europe |
Dirk den Ouden directs the Neurolinguistics Laboratory, which investigates how linguistic structure affects language impairment after stroke. His collaborators include researchers from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Russia, where he has taught in a neurolinguistics summer school program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Moscow. |
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Communication Sciences and Disorders |
Europe |
Dr. Julius Fridriksson’s NIH-funded research focuses on stroke recovery and rehabilitation, often using neuroimaging methods to predict health outcomes. His research includes collaborations with colleagues at the University of Iceland, the University of Tubingen, the University of Nottingham, and other countries where integrated patient information systems allow for thorough tracking of stroke patients as they move through the recovery and rehabilitation process. His doctoral and postdoctoral students have come from a variety of countries, including Iceland, England and China. |
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Environmental Health Sciences |
Europe |
Dr. Baalousha’s studies nanoparticles, nanomaterials and nanotechnology at the SmartState Center for Environmental Nanoscience and Risk. He earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine, in 2001. He completed a master’s degree in applied mechanics in 2002 and doctoral degree in environmental biochemistry in 2006, both from the University of Bordeaux, France, then served in several post-doctoral research positions at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. |
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Environmental Health Sciences |
Europe |
Dr. Tom Chandler’s research interests include aquatic ecotoxicology with emphasis on endocrine-disrupting pesticides, UV-mediated toxicant behavior, contaminated sediment toxicology, reproductive toxicology and teratogenesis, and meiobenthic ecology; risk assessment of xenobiotics in estuarine ecosystems; trophic transfer of pesticides, metals, and organometals; and microcosm modelling under pollution stress. Since 2002, he has represented the U.S. in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Expert Advisory Committee on Invertebrate Toxicity Testing, Paris. |
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Environmental Health Sciences |
Europe |
Dr. Lead's research aims at understanding nanoscale phenomena in the environment and he is interested in investigating natural nanomaterials, manufactured nanomaterials and their interactions. He is a member of the UK DEFRA scientific advisory committees the Advisory Committee on Hazardous Substances (ACHS) and the Nanotechnologies Environmental Hazard and Risk Assessment Taskforce. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and is editor of the journal Environmental Chemistry published by the CSIRO. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Europe |
Dr. Eric Brenner is a medical epidemiologist with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. His research interests include communicable disease control programs and tuberculosis and vaccine preventable diseases. For more than 20 years, he has taught an MPH program at the medical school in Geneva, Switzerland. He also has consulted with and taught for other international organizations, including the World Health Organization, UNICEF, USAID and the International Committee of the Red Cross. |
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Health Services Policy and Management |
South Asia |
Dr. Brian Chen’s research interests include health care law, policy and management, international/global health, law and economics, and the economics of regulation in general. He is studying the impact of Japan’s implementation of the Diagnostic Procedure Code (akin to the Diagnosis- Related Group prospective payment system in the United States) on provider incentives and behavior. He advises students from Taiwan and China, in addition to students from within the state of South Carolina, the South and New England. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
South Asia |
Dr. Edward Frongillo conducts research globally to learn how to improve the growth, development, feeding, care, and survival of infants and young children. He leads research on the measurement, determinants, and consequences of household and child food insecurity, most recently conducting research with colleagues and students giving voice to the experiences of food insecurity by children. His research program also aims to understand how to advance policy and programs for improving nutrition and development. He teaches courses in global health and program evaluation, and mentors graduate students from around the world. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Africa |
Dr. James Hébert has been the director of the S.C. Statewide Cancer Prevention and Control Program (CPCP) since its founding in 2003. The CPCP is dedicated to discovering the underlying causes of the largest cancer disparities in the world, ranging from oral cancers in India to numerous cancers in African Americans compared to their European-American counterparts. Much of the recent work in diet and related health factors focuses on the Dietary Inflammatory Index, which Dr. Hébert invented in 2004 and is now being used by >100 research groups in 36 countries around the world. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Europe |
Dr. Angela Liese has been a researcher on a project involving the international comparison of snack food availability in supermarkets with colleagues at the Centre for Physical Activity and Nutrition Research at Deakin University in Australia. She is a mentor for international students in the Department of Epidemiology. She defines global health as “any health problem or health-behavior related problem that is manifested worldwide (or at least in more than one country) and is addressed with an international framework in mind.” |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Western Pacfic |
Dr. Xiaoming Li’s research interests include development, delivery, and evaluation of culturally appropriate best practices in the areas of mental health and HIV/AIDS behavioral prevention intervention in both domestic and international settings. He has been continuously funded by NIH since 2001 to study HIV disclosure, stigma, HIV treatment and care, resilience, and other health issues among children and adolescents, rural migrants, men who have sex with men, female sex workers, children and family affected by HIV/AIDS, and people living with HIV/AIDS in China. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Western Pacific |
Dr. Jihong Liu is a perinatal, pediatric, and reproductive epidemiologist with a focus on obesity, lifestyle behaviors and chronic disease prevention in mothers, children, and adolescents. Currently, she is working on two funded projects in China: 1) maternal methylmercury exposure through rice ingestion and the impact on offspring neurodevelopment; 2) joint effects of childhood obesity and PAEs on puberty onset in boys through Kisspeptin/GPR54. She has been actively engaged with Chinese researchers in the area of her expertise and hopes to further expand her collaborative efforts. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Western Pacific |
Dr. Anwar Merchant collaborates with colleagues in Thailand in a study evaluating oral health and ventilator-associated pneumonia and on dental caries prevention in children with disabilities. He is also involved in a dietary intervention for cardiovascular health with colleagues in Saudi Arabia. He consults internationally on cardiovascular research with the World Health Organization in New Delhi, India. He defines global health as “the translation of scientific knowledge into practical solutions specific to a place, region, and country.” |
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Health Services Policy and Management |
Africa & Southeast Asia |
Dr. Jan Ostermann is a health services researcher who focuses on individuals’ decision making around health and preventive behaviors. His research targets the intersection of health policy and health economics, access and outcomes disparities, and inefficiencies in resource allocation. Dr. Ostermann has been PI or co-I on diverse NIH-funded and other projects in the United States and multiple low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, and central America. Studies included observational research studies and randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Examples of his international work include an RCT evaluating whether preference-matched HIV testing offers increase the rates of HIV testing among high-risk populations in Tanzania, an mHealth-focused RCT evaluating whether autonomous SMS reminders and conditional financial incentives improve the timeliness of childhood vaccinations in Tanzania, a 15-year study of the wellbeing of orphaned and abandoned children in Cambodia, India, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, a UNICEF-funded evaluation of a national cash transfer program to improve educational outcomes of children in Tunisia, and the evaluation of an intervention to improve the quality of care in child development centers in El Salvador. Dr. Ostermann's U.S.-based research portfolio has covered topics ranging from alcohol consumption and smoking to HIV medication preferences and HPV vaccination uptake. |
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Exercise Science |
Europe |
Dr. Russell Pate is an exercise physiologist with interests in the determinants and health implications of physical activity and physical fitness in children. His leadership around physical activity initiatives and policy development in the United States has international public health implications, including his work on international initiatives aimed at increasing physical activity and preventing obesity in youth. Over the past 20 years, he has led the annual CDC-sponsored Physical Activity and Public Health Postgraduate Courses which have attracted researchers and practitioners from around the world. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Western Pacific |
Dr. Shan Qiao has focused on HIV prevention and care since 2006 and has been working with diverse vulnerable populations in China including female sex workers, children affected by HIV/AIDS, and people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH) as well as health care providers engaged in HIV prevention and care. Her recent research interest focuses on HIV disclosure, medication adherence, and mental health among PLWH, and intervention deign, evaluation and implementation. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Americas |
Dr. David Simmons’s current research focuses on the relationship between human rights abuses and health outcomes for Haitian agricultural workers, or braceros, in the Dominican Republic. His research also focuses on international health, social justice, health and healing in the African Diaspora, social and health disparities, community-based participatory research, community-university partnerships. |
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Exercise Science |
Western Pacifc |
Dr. Mei Sui’s research focuses on the promotion of physical activity with a specific emphasis on physical activity epidemiological research and lifestyle intervention to reduce cardiovascular disease risk factors. She is actively pursuing funding opportunities with Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine where they have an ongoing epidemiological study for patients coming for preventative examinations. Dr. Sui is trying to implement an objective measurement of physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness in their existing database. Dr. Sui hopes to extend her area of research to countries like China and other developing places. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Americas |
Dr. Myriam Torres’s research focuses on Hispanic/Latino health issues; perinatal issues among Latinas, and HIV/AIDS among Latino populations. In Bogotá, Colombia, she was a professor of nursing at Javeriana University, head nurse in outpatient services at the San Ignacio Hospital and head nurse in the OB/Gyn and Neonatal Intensive Care for Clínica del Country, Bogotá, Colombia. She also was head nurse and nursing director at San Rafael Hospital in Girardot, Colombia.
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Health Services Policy and Management |
Africa |
Dr. Sudha Xirasagar’s research focuses on colorectal cancer screening, health disparities, stroke care outcomes, and international health services research in the areas of healthcare utilization, provider behavior, and clinical outcomes. She teaches a graduate course on international health and leads a two-week, India study abroad program for graduate and undergraduate students. Her recent research in international health has focused on maternal and child health services in Nigeria. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Africa |
Dr. McLain has led the development of statistical methodology to estimate the annual burden of child malnutrition and obesity in African countries in collaboration with the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Children’s Fund. He is working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a review of the methodology used to estimate the contribution of poor nutrition to the global burden of disease, disability, and mortality. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Americas |
Dr. Jim Thrasher’s research aims to develop, evaluate, and enhance communication and policy interventions that most effectively address tobacco use and unhealthy eating – behaviors that increasingly account for much of the preventable disease burden around the world. He primarily focuses on innovative communication and policy interventions with potential for broad public health impacts, including among disadvantaged populations. His collaborations span a range regions but are primarily with researchers and students from across the Americas, especially at the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in Mexico. He teaches courses on public health policy and communication, including courses at the INSP School of Public Health. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Africa |
Dr. Leila Larson’s research interests include the intersection of nutrition and early childhood development. Her work focuses on designing and evaluating interventions across the life cycle to improve maternal and child nutritional status, mental and motor development, and growth. Her research program also aims to improve the measurement of nutritional status and brain functioning. She teaches courses in global health and program evaluation. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Africa |
Dr. Mufaro Kanyangarara is an epidemiologist and her research focuses on infectious diseases and maternal and child health in Africa. She teaches a course in global health epidemiology and mentors international students. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Latin America |
Dr. Guimaraes has conducted multiple HIV and sexually transmitted disease prevention research studies that focused on newly emigrated Hispanic/Latinx individuals in South Carolina. Her most recent study is seeking to better understand COVID-19 vaccine acceptance or hesitancy among Spanish and Portuguese speakers in the state. Dr. Guimaraes teaches public health courses in Costa Rica during Maymester through the Education Abroad Office’s Global Health in Costa Rica Program. |
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Health Services Policy and Management |
Western Pacific |
Dr. Hung's research has been surrounding maternal and child health, rural healthcare delivery, access to quality care, and consumer choice. Her work applies both large-scale and hyper-local perspectives (rural-urban, county-level, organizational-level variations) to examine the impact of multilevel policy, program, and interventions on access, quality, and patient welfare. Working with interdisciplinary teams of clinicians, administrators, community health workers, and other public health stakeholders around the globe, Dr. Hung aims to advance health equity via productive, insightful research collaborations. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Europe, China, and South Asia |
Dr. Jingkai Wei has been an epidemiological researcher on cardiovascular disease and cognitive aging. He has been involved in several research projects of populations in South Asia (The Center for Cardiometabolic Risk Reduction in South Asia, CARRS) and China (the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study). He is now working on the Whitehall II study and the UK Biobank to study lifestyle factors and neurocognitive outcomes. |
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Health Services Policy and Management |
Eastern Mediterranean Region / Arabian Peninsula |
Dr. Nabil Natafgi is a health services researcher with over 8 years of research experience in the areas of performance improvement, telehealth, and patient engagement. His research encompasses a variety of methodological approaches including both quantitative and qualitative analyses, with emphasis on mixed-methods and a special interest in the engagement of patients, community members, health care providers, and other stakeholders. Originally from Lebanon, Dr. Natafgi has worked and continue to work on various research and consultancy projects in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) and the Arabian Gulf countries, including Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and others. |
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Exercise Science |
UK and Europe; Canada; Middle East |
Dr. Arent's research interests include human performance and sport nutrition considerations in high-level athletes across these regions. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Africa & Asia; Americas |
Dr. Christine Blake is an international expert on food choice who has conducted both qualitative and quantitative studies on the drivers of food choice in diverse populations. Her work focuses on contextual and cognitive factors that drive food choice with an emphasis on people and organizations that shape these behaviors in families and children. Dr. Blake teaches undergraduate and graduate level course in public health nutrition, health promotion, and qualitative methods for public health research and practice. |
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Environmental Health Sciences |
Europe |
Dr. Scott's research has focused on the impacts of climate change on ocean health issues such as Harmful Algal Blooms, Infectious Microbes and Contaminants of Emerging Concern as they affect both ecosystem and human health. Interacting with ocean and human health researchers throughout Europe including Exeter University in the United Kingdom the Hanse Institute for Advance Learning in Delmenhorst, Germany. Research focuses on impacts of increased temperature, flooding and alterations in salinity of the growth and toxin production of HABs and virulence of Vibrio bacteria |
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Communication Sciences and Disorders |
Poland |
Dr. Neils-Strunjas studies Gerontology and prevention of cognitive decline. She received an Erasmus travel grant to teach and develop research collaborations in 2019. |
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Health Services Policy and Management |
Africa |
Dr. Olatosi’s research focuses on HIV/AIDS and application of data science to solve health problems in African countries like Nigeria. He currently serves as a research consultant for a CDC funded international HIV grant in Nigeria. His HIV research focuses on linkage to, and retention in HIV care for vulnerable population groups in Africa. He is also serves as a technical assistant partner with the Center for Integrated Health Programs (CIHP). CIHP is a leading indigenous non-governmental organization established to promote better health outcomes for all Nigerians through creation of strong and sustainable health systems. CIHP supports family-focused, comprehensive high-quality, HIV/AIDS care and treatment activities in Nigeria, and currently treats over 200,000 people living with HIV. |
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Epidemiology and Biostatistics |
Africa, Americas, Europe, Asia |
In the past Dr. Alberg led a systematic review of diet and lung cancer for the World Cancer Research Fund that encompassed the global evidence. Presently he is working with the World Health Organization on a systematic review of the evidence on the health effects of e-cigarettes, a topic of global relevance. |
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School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment |
East Africa, Middle East, & South Asia |
Dr. Fuente's research is situated at the intersection of infrastructure planning, environmental policy, and international development and focuses specifically on the provision of water and sanitation services in low- and middle-income countries. Trained as an environmental economist, urban planner, and environmental scientist, Dr. Fuente has conducted extensive fieldwork in East Africa (Kenya), the Middle East (Egypt), and South Asia (India). His research has been supported by the World Bank, USAID, the SIDA-funded Environment for Development Initiative, and the Global Development Network. |
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Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior |
Latin America |
Deborah L. Billings serves as Senior Advisor for Group Care Global (GCG), which promotes group health care for mothers, infants, partners, and their families to improve maternal and child health and well-being. With support from the EU’s Horizon 2020, GCG collaborates with nine partners in seven countries to implement group prenatal and postpartum/parenting care. For the past 35 years, she has worked globally on sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice, including access to safe abortion, contraceptive care, prevention of intimate partner and sexual violence, prenatal-birthing-postpartum group care. During her undergraduate degree, she conducted research in Costa Rica on family planning usage and moved to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico upon graduating to work on contraceptive access in border regions, especially in the maquiladoras. During her doctoral program, she lived and worked in Guatemala and along the Guatemala-Mexico border to conduct oral histories with Guatemalan refugee women about their experiences of organizing in exile. In 1995, she began a career as a researcher with Ipas, where she worked globally on access to postabortion care (PAC) and safe abortion care. Dr. Billings has served as a consultant to organizations including World Bank, UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UNTF), and The Fund for Global Human Rights. |
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Nursing |
Middle East, Asia, & Europe |
Dr. Tavakoli is a biostatiscian with considerable experience in data management, linear modeling, logistic regression, and experimental design. |