2000 - Present
2000
Jeffrey Blander, SM, SM ’04, recently started the Bienmoyo Foundation, a non-profit 501 c(3) organization dedicated to developing health care and life-science programs that provide access to low-cost health care services, information technologies, and diagnostic tests for infectious and non-infectious disease management in resource-poor countries. Blander also continues to teach a course he co-developed in 1999 on health care, technology, and business practice at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Before founding Bienmoyo, Blander chaired the Technology Committee for the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council and was a volunteer country program director for the Clinton Foundation in Jamaica. In 2005 he was awarded a National Institutes of Health/Fogarty Fellowship in global health and clinical research in Tanzania. He is now pursuing a Doctorate in Health and Social Behavior at HSPH, and is scheduled to graduate in 2008.
Dr. Ruth C. Browne, SD, of Brooklyn, New York, has been selected to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to serve as a member of the Director's Council of Public Representatives (COPR), a committee that advises the NIH Director on issues of public importance.
2001
Priya Bery, SM, MPH, is director of policy and research at the Global Business Coalition (GBC) on HIV/AIDS. This coalition includes more than 200 companies around the world committed to addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Bery's role concentrates on leading research efforts, such as studies of the economic and security impacts of HIV, and helping shape the Coalition's policy agenda. During the Clinton Administration, Bery served as legislative correspondent for U.S. Senator Carl Levin, focusing on health and environmental issues.
Dr. Humayun J. Chaudhry, SM had his work with the New York Medicaid Asthma Demonstration Project recognized by the faculty of the National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality as the "Best Implementation Area" emerging from the organization's annual meeting. Dr. Chaudhry is the Senior Leader for the project, and is also the Commissioner of Health Services for Suffolk County, New York, serving 1.5 million residents. An internist by training, he is associate director of the Center for Public Health and Health Policy Research at Stony Brook University in New York.
Dr. Patrick P. Miles, MPH, has been appointed the Chief of Aerospace Medicine at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Douglas Shenson, SM, and colleagues have developed an innovative national progarm to facilitate the delivery of flu shots at polling places, where older Americans turn out in large numbers on Election Day. Pilot projects were rolled out in 15 locations nationwide, from Boston to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and beyond. Dubbed "Vote and Vax," the program is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
2002
Dr. Chih-Wei Liang, MPH, of Chang-Gong Memorial Hospital, Taipai, Taiwan, will be married on March 18, 2006.
2003
Dr. Shiv Grewal, MPH, sends news from Cambodia, where he has been working as a medical doctor and project manager in a remote village health center. One of two staff members, Dr. Grewal handles the project's programming, logistics, finances, proposal development, and student research.
Benita Jackson, MPH, is an assistant professor of psychology at Smith College, focusing on how health psychology can inform racial ethnic disparities.
Dr. Diana Pinto, SD, received the prestigious Latin America award, Premio Internacional Jose Luis Bobadilla en Politicas de Salud, for her research on "Managed Competition and Quality of Care from the Consumer's Perspective: Evidence from Health Care Reform in Columbia" in November 2004. For the past two years, Dr. Pinto has worked as assistant to the Columbian Minister of Health, dealing mainly with matters related to benefits coverage and financial sustainability.
John A. Rock, SM, is founding dean of the College of Medicine and senior vice president for medical affairs at Florida International University. He is former director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He also served as chairman and director of residency training programs in the department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine. Rock established a school of public health at Louisiana State University, where he served as chancellor of the Health Sciences Center and chancellor emeritus, and taught obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and public health.
2004
Dr. Thomas Mote, MPH, continues in the private practice of anesthesiology. and has recently started teaching an undergraduate Introduction to Public Health course at DePauw and Butler Universities in Indiana. Mote is also active in his community as a board member of a community health center, Citizens Health, in Indianapolis.
2005
Robert E. Graham, MPH, joined Atlantic Health’s Overlook Hospital, of West Bridgewater, New Jersey, in July. He serves as the education director of ambulatory care and as a general internist. Previously, he was an instructor at Harvard Medical School and medical director of the walk-in center at one of Harvard’s affiliated teaching hospitals, Mount Auburn Hospital, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dr. Ana Viamonte Ros, MPH, was recently appointed Florida’s first female and Cuban-American secretary of the Department of Health (DOH). She will also serve as the state’s first surgeon general. Viamonte Ros is committed to advocating for better health care in Florida, promoting healthy habits among Florida's youth, preparing the state for disasters, and reducing health disparities. Prior to joining DOH, she helped organize and monitor the health care delivery system for Florida's correctional institutions. Viamonte Ros has also worked in the Dominican Republic to help stop the spread of HIV among prison inmates. While a student at HSPH, Ros received the Gareth M. Green Award for Excellence in Public Health Practice, which recognizes students or student teams whose projects in public health practice contribute to the improvement of health of a defined population.
Dr. Hossein Jadvar, MPH, received a MBA degree from the Executive program of the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business after his MPH. He is currently a tenured Associate Professor in the Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering at USC and was recently selected as one of the six inaugural faculty fellows in the USC Center for Excellence in Research. He is also the Director of Research in the USC Department of Radiology with his own research funded by a NIH R01 grant on the diagnostic and prognostic utility of positron emission tomography in metastatic prostate cancer, and a charter member of the Medical Imaging (MEDI) review panel of the NIH and the President of the Nuclear Medicine Section of the Los Angeles Radiological Society.
2006
Dr. Fabian Töegel, MPH, a 2006 co-recipient of an HSPH Albert Schweitzer Fellowship for humanitarianism, led an initiative last winter to set up a medical camp in the Pakistani mountains to help isolated populations there recover from last year's massive earthquake in South Asia. He was joined by three students from HSPH. The program will run for the next twelve months with support from a donation from Merck & Co. Before earning his medical degree, Töegel spent more than a year in India working in the Jhabua district, one of the ten poorest in the country, where he founded the Bhil Health Initiative and Literacy Society and later started an HIV/AIDS program. Today he continues to return to Jhabua to coordinate foster-parent programs and open boarding schools, while also working for the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative in India.
2007
Dr. Elise DeVore Berlan, MPH, an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Ohio State University College of Medicine and faculty member in the Division of Adolescent Health at Nationwide Children's Hospital, recently published The Encyclopedia of Family Health and Wellness, through Alpha House Publishing. It is a 10-volume comprehensive resource set on topics of family health and wellness that includes hundreds of entries on various health issues written to be easily accessible to middle school and high school students, as well as adults with no medical training. More information on the book can be found at the website.