Orvalho Joaquim Augusto, obtained his medical degree from Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, and is finishing his MPH in Global Health from the University of Washington. Orvalho’s research interests include health system strategies to improve the delivery of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and mother and child health interventions. He has experience with managing data systems for demographic surveillance sites, and helped to introduce the use of field electronic data collection in the most established health and demographic surveillance system in Mozambique (the Manhiça Research Center). He is currently working on an evaluation of the use of field health workers to reduce pre-eclampsia/eclampsia to reduce maternal mortality in Mozambique, as part of a multi-center randomized cluster trial.

Becky is interested in using implementation to improve the introduction, scale-up and dissemination of new tools and interventions. She is currently the program manager for the tuberculosis team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where she oversees a portfolio of investments that span from basic science to delivery. She has worked internationally as a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellow (Cote d'Ivoire 2012-2013), with IOM (Philippines 2007-2008) and the Peace Corps (Senegal 2005-2007) as a health educator. Becky received her MPH from the UW DGH (2010) in the Leadership, Policy and Management track and has a BA in International Affairs, with a concentration in International Development Studies and a minor in French Language & Literature from The George Washington University (2004).

Jason Beste, MD, MPH is an internal medicine and infectious disease specialist who completed an Internal Medicine and Social Medicine residency in the Bronx at Albert Einstein Medical School/Montefiore Medical Center. Following residency, Jason moved to Malawi for two years and worked as the medical director for Partners in Health (PIH) where he led PIH’s clinical programs and team in strengthening the delivery platforms of primary care, HIV, TB, and maternal/child health. After Malawi, Jason moved to Seattle and completed an Infectious Disease Fellowship and a MPH in Global Health at UW where he performed MDR-TB research in Mozambique and became interested in health systems strengthening projects in post-conflict settings. Jason’s interest in medical education also led him to launch a new clinical training program for physicians (UW Global and Rural Health Fellowship) where he currently serves as the co-director. For the past two years Jason worked as the Chief Medical Officer for PIH in Liberia where he has worked with the Liberian Ministry of Health rebuilding the health systems in the southeast region in the aftermath of post-ebola while also teaching and providing patient care at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the Divisions of Global Health Equity and Infectious Disease. Jason’s research interests include health systems strengthening projects in the immediate post-conflict setting and MDR-TB/HIV care cascades and linkage to care.

Barbara is interested in the social determinants of reproductive health outcomes, specifically in measuring the effectiveness of reproductive health interventions and ensuring that they meet the needs of vulnerable populations while remaining feasible and sustainable. She is joining the University of Washington PhD program in Implementation Science after working as an Africa Regional Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation Advisor at Ipas, an international NGO that focuses on abortion care, access, and policy change. From this experience, she has become passionate about supporting NGOs to evaluate their work. Barbara holds an MPH in Maternal and Child Health and a BA in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Esther Choo has more than ten years of international development experience with various non-governmental organizations and health agencies, most recently as a Senior Technical Advisor in Integrated Nutrition with CARE USA. She has lived and worked in Uganda and DRC where she managed emergency and development programs covering food security, nutrition, health, water and sanitation, gender, and financial inclusion sectors. In her different capacities she also managed data systems for multi-country programs and worked at the nexus of ICT and development. Her interests lie in designing and identifying technology-based solutions to strengthen health systems in various countries through Ministries of Health and other local partners. She is pursuing her PhD in Implementation Science to apply more effective health monitoring systems in low-resource countries. This includes identifying proven solutions that reduce the time needed for reporting and improve data management and use through the health system. Upon graduation she seeks to further translate evidence-based actions supporting use of ICT solutions to improve development programs. Esther holds an MPH from Emory University in Global Health with a concentration in Public Nutrition.

Growing up in China, Xiaochen Dai is a current PhD student in Implementation Science at Department of Global Health. Before coming to University of Washington, Xiaochen received his Bachelor degree in Biomedical English and Economics at Peking University and his Master degree in Global Health at Duke University. In addition to schooling, Xiaochen is also working as a part-time research associate at Health Alliance International (HAI), a non-governmental organization affiliated with the department. At HAI, Xiaochen is working on a malaria project particularly on the data quality issues in local health facilities in Mozambique. Xiaochen’s research interests include impact evaluation, health system strengthening, universal health coverage and Chinese medical aid in Africa. After graduation, XiaSochen is seeing himself working in the academia as a professor at university or a researcher at a research institute. He hopes to return to China to make contribution to strengthening China’s health system, which is being heavily criticized for its inefficiency and inequity.

Kristen Danforth is the Director of Strategic Planning for the Disease Control Priorities Network, where she facilitates the day-to-day implementation of the project and provides support for DCPN’s country engagement efforts. Her research interests center on the process of policy development and the strategies and tools used by decision makers to incorporate evidence into their approaches to priority setting. Prior to joining DCPN she worked at the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH) as the Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor for I-TECH’s Tanzania program. Before moving to the UW, Kristen worked for the U.S. Institute of Medicine’s Board on Global Health where she supported two reports, one on the evaluation of PEPFAR (2013) and another on cardiovascular health in low- and middle-income countries (2010). She received her B.S. in international health from Georgetown University and her M.P.H. from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Samantha chose to pursue a doctorate in implementation science after she was inspired to identify innovative solutions for streamlining the data collected, used, and reported by health systems in developing countries. Prior to joining the Department of Global Health, she conducted program operations research for international and domestic immunization programs at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her projects included completing national information systems' assessments in Kenya, Tanzania, and Kyrgyzstan as well as studying the impact of new cold chain technology and healthcare worker vaccination policies. Samantha worked with the World Health Organization to develop global guidance for country-level polio vaccine introductions. Originally from California, she received her MPH in Global Epidemiology from Emory University and obtained her BA in Public Health and History of Science and Technology from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Fernandes has worked across all levels of the health sector in Mozambique since completing his training in medicine in 2002. He already served as Provincial Health Director and head of the Monitoring and Evaluating Department at the Ministry of Health. Dr. Fernandes has special interest in measuring Health Systems Strengthening Impact on health outcomes, particularly on maternal, new born and child mortality. Currently he is the Deputy National Director of Public Health and intends to focus his research on Sexual and Reproductive Health to understand best practices to increase access and uptake of family planning services, particularly to youth and adolescents. During the last year he has been a key person in the development of the Mozambique Investment Case on RMNCAH (Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health).

Trina is interested in increasing both the effectiveness of capacity building efforts and the quality/use of routine data from health information systems. She has worked for several nonprofits, including Literacy Bridge and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). For IPA, she first led the fieldwork for a randomized controlled trial in Uganda and then co-led the country office. Most recently, she has been an independent consultant at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In her previous career, she spent six years at Microsoft as a technical writer. She has a BA and an MPA, both from the University of Washington. 

Claire Gwayi-Chore has spent the last five years primarily working in the field of neglected tropical diseases, supporting the implementation of Kenya’s National School-Based Deworming Program and the TUMIKIA Project, a cluster randomized control trial (RCT) assessing the feasibility of the elimination of soil-transmitted helminthes (STH) in Kenya.  Prior to starting the doctoral program, she worked at the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health as an Implementation Science Research Consultant for the DeWorm3 Project, a multi-center cluster RCT in Malawi, Benin, and India aimed at assessing feasibility of eliminating STHs by using existing and intensified mass drug administration strategies, specifically by leveraging existing lymphatic filariasis elimination platforms.

Upon starting the program, Claire will serve as a Research Assistant for DeWorm3, supporting the trial’s implementation science research activities. She plans to embed her dissertation within the trial, focusing on (1) assessing structural determinants of effective implementation of control and elimination campaigns against STH, and (2) more generally, using implementation science theories and methods to assess and develop relevant indicators that can transform community-based research into effectively-scaled public health programs. 

Her research interests include: community-led and -based implementation, behavioral economics, process evaluation, scaling programs, & capacity building of community health workers (CHWs).  After completing her doctorate, Claire hopes to enter academia, provide technical advisory support to Ministries of Health, international organizations, and other public and private actors working in low- and middle-income countries, and support the capacity building of African research institutes related to implementation science research.  

Wisal’s work experience in HIV/AIDS with a focus on women’s health in Kenya, Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire has affirmed her interest and career pathway in working closely with ministries of health (MoH) trying to understand how programs could be effectively implemented to meet their desired results. Her intention is to use the education gained from the Global Health Implementation Science Program to positively influence the development and measurement of sustainable public health programming in maternal health, HIV and TB in her home country, Sudan. In addition, she would like to continue working with graduates and undergraduates from the UW, Sudanese universities and the MoH’s Public Health institute.

Yao is interested in optimizing outcomes of maternal and child health projects by adopting interventions and policies based on implementation and human resources research. Before joining the Ph.D. program in Global Health Implementation Science at the University of Washington in 2018, she worked at Fudan University on a variety of research topics such as China’s global health diplomacy and medical education. She has also worked at Save the Children for two years as the manager of a project that aims to increase availability and utilization of high-quality maternal and newborn health services in rural Southwest China. Yao holds an MPH in Health Policy and Management from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and a BA in Health Policy from the University of Rochester.

Gloria is a medical doctor with an MSc in epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Prior to joining the program, she worked as a study coordinator for NIH funded clinical trials on HIV and malaria in central and eastern Uganda,  after which she began her work on health system evaluation. This included managing a nationally representative health facility assessment, disease control policy assessments, and more recently an evaluation of Gavi support in Uganda. Currently, Gloria’s work involves mapping and measuring the impact of different resources for health. She remains committed to being part of a system that fosters generation and uptake of evidence for applicable and sustainable improvements in the health system for low and middle income countries.  

Elizabeth Irungu joined the PhD program in Global Health Metrics and Implementation Science in 2018. She obtained a medical degree from University of Nairobi and an MPH from University of Washington.

Elizabeth worked on the Partners PrEP Study and the Partners Demonstration Project in Thika, Kenya. She is passionate about scale up of new effective HIV prevention interventions. Elizabeth has been leading the Partners Scale Up Project in Kenya, an implementation project that aims to catalyze scale up of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV serodiscordant couples in public HIV care clinics.

Yoshito Kawakatsu has mainly worked as an expert on community health and impact evaluation in Sub-Saharan African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria for five years. The aim of his work was to deliver essential health services to the vulnerable population through strengthening their health systems and creating innovative evidence. Using both the locally collected and nationally representative datasets, he has published the nine articles in the international journals. His broad research interest is ways to efficiently deliver the necessary health services to vulnerable people, such as the poor and those with disabilities in low and middle-income countries. Yoshito has particular interests in i) human resource for health, ii) innovative approaches such as mHealth and community-based health insurance, and iii) health system evaluation. He aspires to promote evidence-based policy development through bridging the gap between academic and practice.

Nami Kawakyu is an experienced global health professional having worked in the U.S., Africa, and Asia designing and managing public health programs and building monitoring and evaluation systems. She is passionate about health and management workforce development, health systems strengthening, and results-based management. Ms. Kawakyu holds a Master of Public Health in Global Health from the University of Washington, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Rochester, and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Economics from Brandeis University. She is fluent in English, Japanese, and Swahili.

Meredith Kimball is a health systems enthusiast, with an interest in the intersection of health systems, measurement and quality. Meredith aspires to contribute to the body of knowledge on effective models of primary health care system design, as well as the ways in which performance measurement across the health system, bridging management and service delivery, can drive better outcomes.

Prior to joining the PhD program in Global Health Metrics and Implementation Science in 2017, Meredith was a Program Director at Results for Development where she played a leadership role on the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative, which aims to catalyze improvements in primary health care (PHC) in low- and middle-income countries through better measurement and knowledge-sharing.  In addition to this role, Meredith facilitated a network of country policymakers and practitioners within the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage to co-develop tools and practical guidance on how to effectively measure primary health care system performance. 

Prior to R4D, Meredith held positions with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Cecil G Sheps Center for Health Service Research. Meredith holds an AB from Princeton University and an MSPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Sarah Masyuko is a medical doctor and currently the lead of the HIV Testing Services and Pre Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) program at the National AIDS and STI Control Program (NASCOP) with the Kenyan Ministry of Health. She has interest in implementation science with the direct translation of research results into practice in Kenya health programs as well as HIV Prevention, Care and Treatment and its relation to Non-communicable diseases. She completed a one-year MPH degree program in the Department of Global Health, University of Washington in August 2016, with Dr. Carey Farquhar as her primary mentor. Her thesis assessed the variation in effectiveness of HIV assisted partner services in Kenya by region, rural location and gender through a cluster randomized trial. She begins her PhD in Implementation Science at the University of Washington in the fall 2017 and her dissertation will be on Predicting Early Cardiovascular Risk among HIV-infected and Uninfected Kenyan Adults. 

In the last decade, it has become clearer that health systems in low resource countries need better and well thought out policies as well as irreproachable management of limited available funding if they are to respond to the countless health issues they face.  Having worked in such challenging environment, Sabine has developed interest in financing, quality and equity of healthcare services. In 2013, Sabine joined the PhD program in Global Health (Implementation sciences) which provides a unique lens for understanding and improving health systems.  After graduation, she is determined to use this acquired knowledge in service to developing countries, where policies are often developed with little supporting background research, and promote use of evidence based research in order to improve access for all to quality services at an affordable cost.

Brienna Naughton is a native of Boston, MA (USA), and is moving to Seattle from Kigali, Rwanda where she worked for three years with Partners In Health (PIH). In Rwanda, she managed a multidimensional, district-level health systems strengthening intervention, supported numerous research activities, and was closely involved in strategizing for and then launching PIH’s innovative initiative, the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE). UGHE is focused on training future health leaders through a novel emphasis on the science of healthcare delivery. Prior to her work with PIH, she worked in clinical trials at Massachusetts General Hospital after completing her MPH in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases and Global Health at the Yale School of Public Health. At Yale, she led the design, implementation, and analysis of a study of healthcare workers who treated HIV-positive patients in South Africa. Brienna plans to utilize her implementation science PhD to build on her work with UGHE and to study scientific methods for translating evidence to effective interventions in resource-limited settings. She hopes to work with national health sectors and local governments in designing, evaluating, and scaling up interventions in order to improve health and health equity. 

Anne is a medical doctor interested in health systems performance with emphasis on non-communicable disease (NCD) research. Her MPH work at the University of Washington in 2014 focused on assessing for cardiovascular disease risk factors among HIV-infected individuals. With experience as a technical advisor in multiple USAID-funded HIV programs in Kenya, she’s interested in ways of leveraging existent public health programs to integrate NCD care; with focus on disease surveillance. Anne’s academic interests include operations research, program design and evaluation, policy analysis and advocacy in health. She looks forward to using the skills gained from her PhD experience to develop functional NCD surveillance systems and disease registries in Kenya and overall influence sustainable public health programming in non-communicable disease in Africa.

Beryne is a Kenyan medical doctor with an MPH in Global Health, University of Washington (UW). Her faculty adviser while doing her MPH at the UW was Dr. Carey Farquhar. After her graduate studies, she worked as a Postdoctoral fellow, under the mentorship of Dr. Grace John-Stewart, in the Global Center for Integrated Health of Women, Adolescents and Children (Global WACh) and Kenya Research Programs where she coordinated implementation research and national evaluation projects. Prior to joining the Global Health MPH program, she worked as a program officer with the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP) in Kenya. At ICAP, she collaborated with Ministry of Health staff to strengthen health systems by training health workers and integrating HIV services with TB, maternal child health and family planning services. She coordinated programs that provided care to over 16,000 patients in rural Nyanza, Kenya. Her primary interests and work are in maternal, child and adolescent HIV and reproductive health. She is also interested in qualitative research and has conducted three qualitative projects looking at exclusive breastfeeding in Kenyan women, use of text messaging to increase adult adherence to HIV care and assessment of factors that influence health provider adherence to PMTCT guidelines. Her goal is to broaden her understanding and practice of implementation science to improve healthy service delivery in low resource-settings.

André firmly believes that better policies can save millions of lives, the passion for health policy pushed him to study the impact of supra-national policies on national health systems at University of Washington as a Fulbright Scholar. In the future, he wants to put Portugal in the forefront of an ambitious global health agenda and help to design better Health Policies. André is a Medical Doctor and MPH by NOVA University of Lisbon, has already 5 years of professional experience in the area of Public Health, Health Policy and Epidemiology. Before joining University of Washington Dr. André worked for International organizations such as the WHO and the European Commission, and the Ministry of Health in Portugal.

Global public health practitioners have traditionally prioritized increasing volume of and access to services. Stephanie’s research interests focus on understanding the quality of those services and the patient experience of care. Her publications on short-term medical missions in Guatemala and on medical malpractice in the U.S. examine the physical and emotional harms endured by patients. Through doctoral studies, she seeks to expand her knowledge of intervention design and implementation, with a focus on maximizing care quality and ensuring patient dignity. A native of Massachusetts and graduate of Boston University (MPH), Stephanie aspires to teach and conduct research at the intersection of quality improvement and global patient safety. Although her dog will miss the New England snow, Stephanie looks forward to Seattle’s milder winters.

Deanna is joining the PhD program in Global Health Metrics & Implementation Science in 2017 after working for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for over four years. While at the CDC, Deanna worked with national tuberculosis (TB) programs across Africa and Asia to strengthen TB surveillance systems and improve their understanding and use of TB notification data for decision-making. In this job, she also spent significant time in Beijing, leading the development of TB prevention and control pilot projects in China. Before working at CDC, Deanna earned her MPH from Emory University where she focused on global environmental health. Deanna is passionate about studying implementation science to learn how to maximize impact of global health programs, particularly those that intersect health and development. She is interested in working with national health programs and their partners to design, evaluate, and scale-up evidence-based interventions to improve livelihoods in resource-limited settings. She also hopes to teach and provide mentorship on how to use data-driven approaches in global health to ensure the work we do is making the biggest impact in improving lives.

Dorlim joined the PhD program in Global Health Metrics and Implementation Science in 2018. She has a Master degree in Health Science by Fiocruz, Brazil and Medical degree by Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique. Dorlim has been working in research since 2011, firstly in clinical trials and lately in Public Health. She is the coordinator of the HIV Platform of the Mozambique National Health Observatory. She is passionate about HIV infection dynamics in Mozambique and intends to focus on health system strengthening, particularly on HIV service delivery models.

Over the past six years, Dr Beatrice Wamuti has worked in the field of HIV partner services to improve case finding, diagnosis and initiation of antiretroviral therapy for sexual partners to newly diagnosed HIV positive individuals in sub-Saharan African countries. She is a technical advisor and research coordinator at several University of Washington-Kenya projects. She is also part of the National AIDS and STI Control Program (NASCOP) technical working group on HIV testing services within the Kenyan Ministry of Health, and a visiting research scientist at the Kenyatta National Hospital research and programs department.

Beatrice is passionate about healthcare systems strengthening within low and middle income countries and her research interests are in evidence-based clinical research, implementation science and systems management. She obtained her medical degree from the University of Nairobi, an MBA from the Strathmore University and an MPH from the University of Washington.