2025 Global Health Symposium

Marcella Alsan is a Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Alsan received a BA from Harvard University, a master’s in public health from Harvard School of Public Health, a MD from Loyola University, and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University. Alsan trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency Fellowship – then combined the PhD with an Infectious Disease Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to returning to Harvard, she was on faculty at Stanford. She is an applied microeconomist studying health inequality. Some recent papers include “Does Diversity Matter for Health: Experimental Evidence from Oakland” and “Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men” – published in the American Economic Review and The Quarterly Journal of Economics, respectively, and a series of papers on messaging during COVID-19 published in medical and public health outlets. She is currently on the Board of Editors for Science Magazine, Co-Editor of the Journal of Health Economics and Co-Chair of the Health Care Delivery Initiative of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab based out of MIT. She is the co-recipient of the 2019 Arrow Award for Best Paper in Health Economics, the 2021 William G. Manning Memorial Award for the Best Research in Health Econometrics and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. 

Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, is the Dean of the Faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A distinguished scientist, Dr. Baccarelli investigates the molecular mechanisms by which a wide array of environmental exposures causes human disease. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine for his pioneering work showing that social and environmental risk factors adversely affect the human epigenome. Beyond epigenomics, he has explored mechanisms including epitranscriptomics, extracellular vesicles, small non-coding RNAs, mitochondrial DNA, and the microbiome to understand the way toxins and other stressors affect genetic expression and overall health. Dr. Baccarelli’s work has been used by multiple agencies worldwide, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to help shape pollution control policies. Before he took office as Dean of the Faculty in January 2024, Dr. Baccarelli served as the Leon Hess Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. He also served as director of the NIH/NIEHS P30 Center for Environmental Health and Justice in Northern Manhattan and as president of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology. Dr. Baccarelli previously worked at Harvard Chan School as an associate professor from 2010 through 2016. He holds an MD from the University of Perugia in Italy, an MS in Epidemiology from the University of Turin, and a PhD from the University of Milan. 

Matthew A. Baum is the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications and Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research interests include the domestic politics of foreign policy, the influence of the media and public opinion in American politics, fake news and misinformation, and the relationship between partisan media and polarization. His research has appeared in over a dozen leading scholarly journals, such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. His books include Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age (2003, Princeton), War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War (2009, Princeton), and War and Democratic Constraint: How the Public Influences Foreign Policy (2015, Princeton). He is co-founder of the HKS Misinformation Review and co-founder of the Civic Health and Institutions Project (CHIP50).

Dr. Dick Chamla leads emergency preparedness at WHO AFRO, overseeing investments to strengthen member states’ compliance with International Health Regulations (IHR), the National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS), Pandemic Fund, and regional disease elimination strategies. He coordinates risk assessments, pandemic preparedness, and innovations in medical countermeasures. He plays a key role in Africa’s engagement in Pandemic Treaty negotiations, supporting the Africa Group Plus Egypt. With 27 years of experience in development and humanitarian crises across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia, he has led responses to major outbreaks, and spearheaded efforts in rebuilding health systems devasted by conflicts and promoting humanitarian-development-peace nexus in countries such as Afghanistan and Yemen. Dr. Chamla champions primary health care and leverages technologies like AI for health security and universal health coverage. Previously, he held leadership roles at UNICEF, WHO Geneva, Red Cross, and Médecins du Monde, consistently driving transformative changes in complex environments.

George Q. Daley, MD, PhD, is the dean of Harvard Medical School and the Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine. He is a physician-scientist and authority on cancer biology and stem cell science. Daley earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, his PhD in biology from MIT, and his MD from Harvard Medical School. Daley trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and hematology/oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. After serving as chief resident in medicine at MGH, Daley joined the HMS faculty as assistant professor and staff physician in hematology/oncology at MGH while running a laboratory as a Whitehead Fellow at the MIT-affiliated Whitehead Institute. In 2003 he moved to Boston Children’s, where he attended in hematology and directed the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s. Daley has been a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at HMS since 2010. 

Dr. Githinji Gitahi, MBS, joined Amref Health Africa in 2015 and has held various roles spanning the health, media, and private sectors. Prior to his tenure at Amref, he served as Vice President and Regional Director for Africa at Smile Train International. Dr. Gitahi is esteemed for his leadership on both global and regional stages, with notable achievements, including  co-chairing the global UHC2030 movement and serving on the Commission on Africa’s COVID-19 Response. His past roles include serving on the Governing Board of Africa CDC, the Board of the National Cancer Institute, and as Co-Chair of the Strategic Advocacy Committee for PMNCH. Currently, he serves on the Boards of Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Safaricom Foundation, and Food for Education, as well as on the Independent Board of the Lancet Countdown. Recently, he was appointed to the AstraZeneca Global Health Equity Advisory Board and the PMNCH Board, and became a member of the Virchow Foundation Prize Committee and the Advisory Council of the Coalition for Women’s Health in Africa (COWHA). Dr. Gitahi is a prominent advocate for pro-poor Universal Health Coverage and spearheads the largest thought leadership convening on the African health agenda.

John Green is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of books including Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down, and The Anthropocene Reviewed. With his brother, Hank, John has co-created many online video projects, including Vlogbrothers, the educational channel Crash Course and an annual livestreamed fundraiser called the Project for Awesome (P4A). John serves on the Board of Trustees for global health nonprofit Partners in Health and, in partnership with PiH and the Nerdfighter community around Vlogbrothers video, has raised over $30 million dollars to tackle maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. In 2023, John spoke at the United Nations calling for the eradication of tuberculosis cases in the next decade. John lives with his family in Indianapolis, Indiana. 

Dr. Eric Goosby s an internationally recognized expert on infectious diseases, with a specialty in HIV/AIDS clinical care, research, and policy.  During the Clinton Administration, Dr. Goosby was the founding director of the Ryan White CARE Act, the largest federally funded HIV/AIDS program in the U.S.  He went on to become the interim director of the White House’s Office of National AIDS Policy.  In the Obama Administration, Dr. Goosby was appointed Ambassador-at-Large and implemented the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which significantly expanded under his tenure life-saving HIV treatment to millions in Sub Saharan Africa, SE Asia, and Eastern Europe.  

After serving as the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, he was appointed by the UN Secretary-General as the Special Envoy on Tuberculosis in 2015 where he focused on the first-ever UN High-Level Meeting on TB in 2019.  Most recently, he served as a member of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.  He is currently a Professor of Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine and leading the Center for Global Health Delivery, Diplomacy and Economics, Institute for Global Health Sciences.  He is a member of the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup, and serves on the San Francisco Dept. of Public Health, Policy Group for the COVID-19 Response. 

Salmaan Keshavjee, MD, PhD, ScM, is the Director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Global Health Delivery and a Professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. He is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Keshavjee has led the Center for Global Health Delivery since 2014, focusing on improving healthcare delivery systems and patient outcomes across the UAE, Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions, with an emphasis on diabetes, obesity, infectious diseases, mental health, and surgery. With advanced training in medicine and anthropology, Dr. Keshavjee is a leading expert in drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and health policy. He is the author of Blind Spot: How Neoliberalism Infiltrated Global Health. Dr. Keshavjee has worked extensively with Partners in Health, focusing on TB treatment and conducting research in Russia since 2000. From 2006 to 2008, he helped launch one of the first community-based programs for multi-drug-resistant TB and HIV co-infection in Lesotho. His research has resulted in significant clinical and policy changes in TB and MDR-TB treatment. Dr. Keshavjee has served as a member and later Chair of the WHO Green Light Committee for MDR-TB. He has contributed to creating alternative drug procurement and implementation mechanisms and co-authored a U.S. Institute of Medicine white paper on expanding MDR-TB treatment. He also leads a major initiative at Harvard Medical School aimed at achieving zero deaths from TB, including his work on the Zero TB Cities Initiative in collaboration with global partners.

Dr. Petra Khoury is the Global Director of Health and Care at IFRC headquarters in Geneva. In her current role, she oversees the IFRC operational plan on global health security, health protection and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). She works with a network of 191 National Red Cross Red Crescent Societies on health preparedness, readiness and emergency response plans. Prior to this role, she held a public health leadership role serving as Senior Health Adviser to the Prime Minister of Lebanon and led the national COVID-19 response plan as well as chairing the national COVID-19 Vaccination Executive Committee. In this capacity, she developed and executed the operational response and vaccination plan and became the nation’s scientific spokesperson on COVID-19-related matters. She also coordinated the national health disaster plan after the 2020 Beirut explosion on 4 August. Prior to joining the public health sector, Petra was Chief Quality and Compliance Officer and part of the Executive Leadership Team at the American University of Beirut Medical Centre (AUBMC). In this role, she had oversight over quality, safety, risk management, medico-legal matters, Joint Commission accreditations and regulatory compliance. She started her clinical career as a healthcare professional at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) covering different patient care services as infectious disease specialist and managed the antimicrobial stewardship programme. Petra holds a doctorate degree in Pharmacy. She completed her residency training at MGH, where she specialized in infectious diseases. She also earned a post-graduate certificate in Quality, Safety, Leadership and Informatics from Harvard Medical School. She is fluent in Arabic, English and French. 

David Lazer is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer Sciences, Northeastern University. Prior to joining Northeastern University, he was on the faculty at Harvard Kennedy School (1998-2009). In 2019, he was elected a fellow to the National Academy of Public Administration. He has published prominent work on misinformation, democratic deliberation, collective intelligence, computational social science, and algorithmic auditing, across a wide range of prominent journals such as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the American Political Science Review, Organization Science, and the Administrative Science Quarterly. His research has received extensive coverage in the media, including the New York Times, NPR, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and CBS Evening News. He is a co-leader of the COVID States Project, one of the leading efforts to understand the social and political dimensions of the pandemic in the United States. Dr. Lazer has served in multiple leadership and editorial positions, including as a board member for the International Society for Computational Social Science (ISCSS), the International Network of Social Network Analysts (INSNA), reviewing editor for Science, associate editor of Social Networks and Network Science, numerous other editorial boards and program committees. Dr. Lazer received a PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan and a BA in Economics from Wesleyan University. 

Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH is a senior fellow at the Harvard FXB Center and a retired Professor of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a faculty member in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Leaning previously served as director of the Harvard FXB Center (2010-2018) and co-directed the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. She has extensive field experience in crisis situations globally, including the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Somalia, and her research focuses on public health, international law, and responses to war, disaster, and mass atrocities. She has published widely, advised US and UN agencies, and served on the boards of organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights and Oxfam America. Currently, she serves on the Board of the Norwegian Refugee Council USA and the American Red Cross, Massachusetts Region. She is the author of many academic articles, and has co-edited two books, including Humanitarian Crises: The Medical and Public Health Response (Harvard University Press, 1999).  Dr. Leaning earned an AB from Radcliffe College, an MSc from the Harvard School of Public Health, and an MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. She was trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and is board certified in both emergency and internal medicine. 

Dr. Mitnick has worked for more than 25 years to increase access to high-quality, appropriate treatment for TB, especially for drug-resistant TB. Together with collaborators and mentees around the world, she leverages research, training, policy, programmatic support, activism, and advocacy to advance global health equity. Her research includes multi-country clinical trials and observational studies of novel treatments for rifampin-resistant TB. She also works to improve our understanding of post-TB lung impairment: the scale of the problem, how people experience it, and how to care for them. Dr. Mitnick is also Senior Research Associate at Partners In Health and Associate Epidemiologist in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. She received her doctoral training in international health epidemiology and ecology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

Ole Norheim is a physician and Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Ethics and Population Health at the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He co-founded the Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting in Health at the University of Bergen, Norway, and is an Adjunct Researcher at the centre. He is the Lead Series Editor of Disease Control Priorities (fourth edition) and a member of the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Healthcare. Norheim chaired the World Health Organization’s Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage (2012–14) and its Technical Advisory Board on Health Benefit Packages (2019-21). Latest article: Norheim, Chang et al. “Halving premature death and improving quality of life at all ages: cross-country analyses of past trends and future directions.” Lancet 2024.

Ms. Loyce Pace (she/her) is an outspoken advocate and expert on domestic and international health issues, from AIDS to Zika. With more than 20 years of experience in policy, programs, and funding, she has lobbied decision–makers worldwide on the value of investing in emerging priorities. Having lived and worked on the ground in more than 15 countries across 3 continents, her efforts are rooted in experience partnering with a wide range of global stakeholders, including government officials, multilateral bodies, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and universities as well as community-based and grassroots leaders. She is a proud member of several boards dedicated to foreign service and solidarity. A resilient daughter of the inner city who has worked her way into the halls of Congress and the UN, she is keen to pass the baton to other champions for equity and justice that challenge the rollback of rights and progress.

Dr. Rhonda Sealey-Thomas, a national of Antigua and Barbuda, received her Bachelor of Medicine Bachelor of Surgery degree from the University of West Indies. She holds a Master of Public Health degree and a Doctorate in Public Health from the University of West Indies. She has held several positions in the health sector in Saint John’s, Antigua and Barbuda including serving as Medical Officer of Health in the Ministry of Health. Prior to her appointment as the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Assistant Director, Dr. Sealey-Thomas was Chief Medical Officer for the Ministry of Health in Antigua and Barbuda and was the Chief Technical Advisor to the Minister of Health on all public health matters of regional and international concern. 

Dr. Emily Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine/Surgery at Duke University and an Assistant Professor of Global Health at the Duke Global Health Institute. Her research interests focus on the intersection of children’s health and poverty. Currently, her research takes place in Tanzania, Burundi, Somaliland, and Latin America. Dr. Smith received her PhD in epidemiology from the Gillings School of Public Health at UNC-CH and an MSPH from the University of South Carolina. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she started a popular Facebook page and Substack newsletter called Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist through the lens of love-your-neighbor, reaching 10 million people in 80 countries. Her work has been featured in NPR, the Washington Post, and TIME Magazine. Dr. Smith’s book, The Science of the Good Samaritan: Thinking Bigger about Loving our Neighbors, was released in 2023 (Zondervan, Harper Collins). Dr. Smith has been married to her pastor-husband for 21 years and they have two fantastic children, one spoiled golden retriever and a new very-friendly golden doodle puppy. 

From 2010-2017, Prof. Tlou was UNAIDS Regional Director and provided leadership for a sustainable AIDS response in 21 African countries. She is a former Member of Parliament and Minister of Health of Botswana (2004-2008). She is also former Professor of Nursing at the University of Botswana and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Development in Africa. As Minister of Health, Prof. Tlou led a comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care program that led to significant reductions in HIV mother-child transmission and maternal mortality. She holds a PhD in Nursing from the University of Illinois at Chicago., a Masters in Nursing Education from Columbia University, and a Master of Science from the Catholic University of America. She has many publications and has received over 30 international awards for Leadership in Global Health. 

Michael VanRooyen is the Founder and Director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University. He is the Chairman of Emergency Medicine at both Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Enterprise Chief of Emergency Services for the Mass General Brigham Health System. He has worked in over thirty countries affected by war and disaster, including Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, North Korea, Darfur-Sudan and Ukraine. He also served with the American Red Cross after the World Trade Center attack in New York on September 11th and with US Secret Service, NASA the Navajo and Apache tribes in Arizona and New Mexico. He authored the textbook “Emergent Field Medicine” and “The World’s Emergency Room” describing the evolution of modern humanitarian aid and the threats to healthcare workers in conflict.