The Department of Global Health is thrilled to welcome eight new PhD in Global Health Metrics and Implementation Science students to our community this fall. This newest cohort is truly global with the new students representing seven different countries: Cameroon, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and the United States.
The UW's PhD program in Global Health is the first of its kind, building on the expertise of our faculty in the areas of metrics and implementation science. The PhD program provides students with the latest and most innovative tools to advance global health solutions that are critical for decision-making and priority setting.
Yuwei Wang
Yuwei joined the PhD program in Global Health Implementation Science in 2023. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Social Work from Fudan University, an MPhil degree in Evidence-based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation from the University of Oxford, and an MPH degree in Mental Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Through her active participation in diverse research projects and internships, Yuwei has acquired extensive experience in conducting systematic reviews and quantitative analyses within the realm of mental health, stigma reduction, opioid use, intimate partner violence, and maternal and child health. Her primary focus lies in evaluating interventions that address barriers to care and adapting evidence-based practices to resource-limited settings through the lens of implementation science, particularly in the field of mental and behavioral health. Recently, she has developed a deep passion for innovative research methods that shed light on comprehensive, cost-effective, and equitable solutions to address health issues. These include causal inference, economic evaluation, and spatial analyses. With these cutting-edge approaches, she aspires to contribute to the promotion of public mental health on a global scale through impactful research endeavors.
Helena Manguerra
Helena's experience in global health has centered around measuring infant and child growth, supporting community health workers, and working with communities of faith. Helena worked for four years as a Post-Bachelor Fellow and Research Scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). For the Global Burden of Disease project, Helena modeled attributable disease burden due to low birth weight, short gestation, and child growth failure. For the past three years, Helena has worked as a Research Associate at International Care Ministries (ICM), a poverty reduction NGO based in the Philippines. At ICM, she helped to design, build, and evaluate the organization's new community health worker program. Helena completed her MPH in Global Health Metrics & Evaluation from the University of Washington and her BS in Global Health from Georgetown University.
William Garcia
William is an economist and global health researcher interested in combining quantitative research methods, insights from economics, and health policy frameworks to examine approaches to improving the implementation of healthcare programs and health and intersectoral policies. He is Research Associate at the Universidad Icesi Research Center on Health Economics and Social Protection (PROESA) in Colombia. William has worked in the public sector advising on human capital policies and has led research and consultancy projects on policy evaluation, health services, and health and development economics. He holds a Master's in Economics from Universidad de los Andes and is joining the doctoral program in Global Health Metrics and Implementation Science at the University of Washington as a Fulbright Scholar.
Akash Malhotra
Akash Malhotra is an incoming PhD student in Implementation Science and currently a Senior Research Program Coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health serving as the scientific coordinator and costing coordinator for TB and TB-HIV clinical trials across Africa. In the past, Akash worked at the Clinton Health Access Initiative supporting service delivery of their Tuberculosis, COVID-19, Oxygen, Vaccines, Nutrition, SRMNCAH, and Health System Strengthening programs in Southeast Asia. Akash’s programmatic and research experience focuses on addressing delays in patient diagnosis and linkage to care, applying both a patient-and-provider-centered approach in low resource settings.
Gift Nwanne
Gift Nwanne holds an MPH in Global Health from the University Washington and a BSc in Microbiology from the University of Abuja. He worked in food quality control, in Abuja’s environmental protection agency lab monitoring pathogens coming through and at the medical microbiology bench of a hospital analyzing different human samples before his curiosity to understand the social determinants of health that predisposes people to illnesses made him pivot into public health research.
He has since spent his time doing work to improve services and access for people whom society has made vulnerable, like pregnant women, their infants and adolescents living with HIV, and adolescents and families experiencing homelessness. He has experience working with ministries of health, non-governmental organizations, civil society groups, and community organizations in Nigeria and the US where he has lived and worked.
Gift Nwanne is currently a Research Project Manager for the HIV Vaccines Trials Network at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center where he facilitates the day-to-day implementation of human vaccine trials for malaria, TB, and HIV vaccine candidates. Gift is joining the PhD program in Global Health Implementation Science in 2023 and is interested in using implementation science strategies to improve the design, implementation, scale-up and dissemination of interventions for infectious and re-emerging diseases.
Chinmay Laxmeshwar
Chinmay has joined the PhD program in Global Health Metrics and Implementation Science in 2023 after working with PATH, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, and the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. He has a decade of experience working in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, where he has led various studies looking to strengthen healthcare delivery, mainly for TB and HIV. At PATH, he was an integral part of the STAR III initiative that has provided crucial evidence for the introduction of HIV self-testing in India.
He has earned his bachelor's degree from the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences and an MPH in Social Epidemiology from the well-regarded Tata Institute of Social Sciences. His research interests include infectious diseases, mainly focusing on person - and community- centered care while simultaneously strengthening local health systems. Chinmay plans to use the skills gained during his Ph.D. to strive for quality improvement in healthcare delivery and the use of cutting-edge technologies to ensure that healthcare delivery is equitable, accessible, and person- and community-centered.
Julian Salim
Julian Salim finished his Master of Public Health study at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, in 2021. He is a public health professional with over six years of professional experience surrounding disease surveillance and health systems strengthening. He recently works as a director of Rakat Mengabdi, a Non-Government Organization in Indonesia. This TB- focused organization convenes local, national, and global actors and wide-ranging health campaigns to support research, decision-making, and policy. He intends to focus his doctoral research on studying strategies to improve rapid diagnosis and clinical management of rural, low-educated, and poor populations living with TB disease, drug-resistant TB, and latent TB infection. He is also interested in rethinking existing health financing, technologies, and policies to better serve the needs of these populations who are often missed by adequate TB services.
Bih Epse Cuba Moki Suh
Bih Epse Cuba Moki Suh grew up in Cameroon and is joining University of Washington’s Ph.D. program in Implementation Science after working as a Monitoring and Evaluation Cluster Lead for the TIDE (Translating Data and Evidence into Impact) Program at the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact- Georgetown University, an international NGO, that focuses on supporting HIV response efforts for the achievement of HIV epidemic control. Over the years, he has dedicated herself to understanding the complexities of HIV prevention and finding effective strategies to combat this global challenge and has become passionate about the scale-upscale- evaluation of HIV prevention interventions, specifically in low-income countries in Africa. In addition to her professional work, she is an advocate for policy changes that support HIV prevention efforts as she strongly believes that by combining scientific research, community engagement, and policy advocacy, we can create a world where HIV transmission is reduced, stigma is eradicated, and population have access to the resources and knowledge necessary to protect themselves and their communities. Bih holds a Master of Science degree in Epidemiology from the University of Buea, Cameroon. She is Fluent in English and French.