2026 Global Health Symposium

Dr. Ingrid V. Bassett is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Infectious Disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has over 20 years of experience leading clinical research in South Africa with the goal of improving HIV care and prevention for people living at the center of the global HIV epidemic. She is the Co-Director of the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research, which provides research, training, and educational opportunities for early-stage investigators. She is also the recipient of an NIH K24 award that supports her role as a research mentor; she has mentored >30 US- and Africa-based investigators. Dr. Bassett graduated from Harvard Medical School and was an Internal Medicine Resident and Chief Medical Resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital before training in Infectious Disease at the joint Massachusetts General Hospital/Brigham and Women’s Hospital program. She also earned an MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Bassett was the winner of the 2015 HIV Medicine Association Research Award.

Abebe Bekele, MD, PhD, FCS (ECSA), FACS, FRCS(Ed), MAMSE, is Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic and Research Affairs and founding Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Rwanda. He has served as the CEO of the Black Lion Teaching Hospital and Dean of the School of Medicine at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He is a Full Professor of Surgery (General and Thoracic Surgery), and holds full professorial faculty positions at UGHE, Addis Ababa University, and the University of Rwanda, as well as a professorship in global health at Duke University in the USA. He has over 26 years of experience in medical and surgical education, and he is a fellow of both the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Master Surgical Educators of the American College of Surgeons. Professor Abebe is the Secretary General of the College of Surgeons of East Central and Southern Africa (COSECSA). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the East and Central Africa Journal of Surgery and sits on the editorial board of the JAMA Health Forum, BMC Medical Education, and the Ethiopian Medical Journal. He is also the founder and the secretary-general of the Consortium of Medical Schools of Africa (COMSA). Professor Abebe is actively engaged in Global Safe Surgery and has served as a senior advisor to the Federal Ministry of Health, Ethiopia, in the Saving Lives Through Safe Surgery initiative. He is the founder and current chairman of the Pan African Surgical HealthCare Forum (PASHeF). His research interests include trauma, surgical oncology, equity in global surgery, and education. 

Dr Kalipso Chalkidou is the Director of Health Financing and Economics at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva and a Visiting Professor of Global Health at the School of Public Health, Imperial College London. Before she joined WHO she set up and run the Department of Health Finance at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and prior to that she was Director of Global Health Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development and a Founding member of the international decision support initiative (iDSI). Her work has concentrated on helping governments build technical and institutional capacity for using evidence to set investment priorities en route to UHC.

Dr. Dick Chamla leads the Emergency Preparedness portfolio and coordinates the Emergency Hub in the WHO AFRO region, managing investments and strengthening capacities among member states for the implementation of and compliance with the International Health Regulations (IHR). He also provides oversight to the teams responsible for predicting the risk of high-threat pathogens, assessing countries’ readiness capacities, researching innovations for medical countermeasures, and implementing regional frameworks for the elimination of cholera, yellow fever, and meningitis. He is currently leading WHO AFRO engagement in the Pandemic Treaty negotiations under the Inter-governmental Negotiation Body (INB), providing strategic support to the Africa Group and Egypt. Dr. Chamla is highly experienced in both development and complex emergencies, with a career dating back 27 years. He started with the Red Cross refugee program in western Tanzania, and has worked in conflict-affected northern Uganda, Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan. More recently, he led the WHO response to the largest cholera outbreak in Malawi and the Marburg outbreak in Tanzania. His expertise in health systems and recovery is anchored in advancing primary health care and optimizing opportunities presented by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence to achieve health security and universal health coverage (UHC). Prior to his current role at WHO AFRO, Dr. Chamla has run large health programs at UNICEF in New York and Afghanistan, WHO in Geneva, Uganda, and IST/Harare, Medecins du Monde in China, New South Wales Health in Australia, and the Red Cross in Tanzania. 

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. 

Alejandro Gaviria, PhD is a Colombian economist, writer, and politician. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California and has served as Colombia’s Minister of Health and Social Protection and as Minister of Education. He has worked as a researcher at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and has held senior academic leadership positions at the University of the Andes, including Dean of the Faculty of Economics and President of the University. Dr. Gaviria has published dozens of academic articles on social policy and development and has authored more than ten books that blend literary essay with a critical perspective on contemporary politics. 

Dr. Mukherjee is associate professor of medicine in the Division of Global Health Equity, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and associate professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. In the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, she directs the Master of Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery program and the Program in Global Medical Education and Social Change. She teaches infectious disease, global health delivery and human rights to health professionals and students from around the world. Dr. Mukherjee has helped to create new residency and fellowship training programs for Rwandan and Haitian physicians as well as global health residencies and fellowships for US trainees at Harvard and other American universities.

Dr. Mukherjee is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School, trained in infectious disease, internal medicine, and pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and has an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. Since 2000, Dr. Mukherjee has served as the chief medical officer of Partners In Health, a nonprofit medical organization focused on reducing global health disparities by strengthening health systems through public sector support and community-based programs. She provides strategic guidance on the implementation of clinical programs at PIH’s sites in Haiti, Rwanda, Malawi, Lesotho, Peru, Mexico, Russia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia and has served as an expert consultant for the World Health Organization and Ministries of Health on of HIV, TB, health systems strengthening and health work force development.

Dr. Mukherjee also serves on the board of directors for Village Health Works (Burundi) and Muso (Mali) and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. She advises various grassroots organizations throughout the developing world in their work to deliver health care with a human rights based approach to the poorest of the poor.

Dr. Sania Nishtar joined Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on 18 March 2024. A trained medical doctor, Dr. Nishtar has built an outstanding career over 30 years as a national and global leader. She served as a Senator in her home country of Pakistan; as Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation; and as a Federal Minister with responsibility for re-establishing the country’s Ministry of Health. Dr. Nishtar has fulfilled several leadership positions in civil society and international organizations; founded a health reform non-profit NGO think tank in Pakistan; co-authored dozens of academic papers and books; and published in leading newspapers. A graduate of Khyber Medical College and King’s College London, she has received many international awards; in 2020, the BBC named her among 100 inspiring and influential women around the world.  

Dr. Ole F. Norheim is the Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Ethics and Population Health at the 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. Dr. Norheim’s wide-ranging research interests include theories of distributive justice, inequality in health, how they apply to priority setting in health systems, and how to achieve Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goal for health. He firmly believes that priority setting for health should aim for the greatest number of healthy life years for all, fairly distributed. Dr. Norheim is Lead Series Editor of Disease Control Priorities (published by the World Bank), a member of the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health (CIH3) and the Lancet Commission on Sustainability in Healthcare (LCSH). Dr. Norheim has chaired the 2009 revision of Norwegian Guidelines for Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, the World Health Organization’s Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage (2012-2014), and the third Norwegian National Committee on Priority Setting in Health Care (2013-2014). He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in journals such as the Nature Medicine, Science, Lancet, Lancet Global Health, BMJ, Bulletin of WHO, Health Policy and Planning, and Journal of Medical Ethics. 

Dr. Aparna Parikh is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a gastrointestinal oncologist at the MGH Cancer Center. She leads the Colorectal Medical Oncology Research and Young Adults Colorectal Cancer programs and is internationally renowned for her expertise on gastrointestinal cancers and work in liquid biopsy and ctDNA. She is the co‑founder and CEO/Chief Scientist of Reversing Early Recurrence and serves as Director of the MGH Global Cancer Care Program, and Co-Director of the GI Cancer Program at the MGB Cancer Institute. Dr. Parikh is a respected clinician, researcher and advocate for equitable cancer care worldwide. 

Claudia Pescetto holds a Master of Arts in Applied Economics from Johns Hopkins University (United States) and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

She currently serves as Regional Advisor in Evidence and Information in Health Economics and Financing at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). In this role, she provides strategic technical guidance and conducts advanced quantitative and qualitative analyses to inform health financing policy decisions across the region. Her work focuses on improving efficiency, equity, and sustainability in the generation, pooling, and allocation of health resources.

She leads PAHO’s regional initiatives to strengthen public financial management (PFM) systems for health, supporting effective planning, execution, monitoring, and evaluation of health budgets. She also coordinates PAHO’s regional project to enhance health expenditure data through the institutionalization of health accounts production (using the SHA 2011 framework) and promotes their use in evidence-based policymaking. Additional areas of expertise include the definition and costing of health benefit packages, analysis of financial protection using household surveys, and fiscal space assessments for health.

Previously, she worked as a Research Analyst at the International Monetary Fund in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department, where she contributed to Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) missions in countries across the Americas and the Middle East. Her responsibilities also included monitoring and reporting on global financial markets and banking sector indicators.

Dr. Rhatigan is associate chief of the Division of Global Health Equity and director of the Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency Program.  Dr. Rhatigan graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he practices hospital medicine.  He has held a number of leadership positions in post graduate medical education.  As one of the key faculty members of the Harvard Global Health Delivery Project, he examines the delivery of health services in low-resource settings through case studies. He is one of the co-directors of Harvard’s Global Health Delivery Intensive summer program and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

John-Arne Røttingen is Chief Executive Officer of Wellcome, UK. He has served as Ambassador for Global Health at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway, been Adjunct Scientific Director at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and Visiting Fellow of Practice at Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University. He was the founding Chief Executive Officer of CEPI – Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and has been the Chief Executive of the Research Council of Norway; Executive Director of Infection Control and Environmental Health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health; Professor of Health Policy at the Department of Health Management and Health Economics, Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo; and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has been the founding Chief Executive of the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services; Oxford Scholar at Wadham College; Fulbright Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School; Chair of the Board of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research; board member of Gavi, PATH, Medicines Patent Pool and GARDP; Chair of the Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination (CEWG), WHO, co-chair of the steering group of the Future of the Global Health Initiatives, chair of the ACT-Accelerator Facilitation Council’s Financing and Resource Mobilization Working Group, and member of the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.  

Dr. Sriram Shamasunder is a Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and co-founder and faculty director of the HEAL Initiative, a health workforce strengthening fellowship working in Navajo Nation and 9 countries around the world. Over the last nine years, HEAL has grown to include over 270 fellows, half of whom are Native American or from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Dr. Shamasunder was named the Young Physician of the Year in 2010 by the Northern California Chapter of the American College of Physicians and was named an Asia21 Fellow by the Asia Society in 2012, a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar to India in 2012, and a Draper Richards Kaplan Entrepreneur in 2016. He was an Emerson Dial Fellow in 2021 and received the UCSF Chancellor’s Edison T. Uno Award for Public Service in 2023. Sri is a published poet who studied and taught with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People while at UC Berkeley. Dr. Shamasunder is interested in the role of solidarity in elevating untold stories and advancing health equity. In 2016, he gave a Berkeley TEDx talk entitled “Whose Suffering Matters Less, and Why?” 

Dr. Addis is a Senior Director for Integrated Health System Investments at Amref Health Africa-Ethiopia, bringing over 20 years of experience as a distinguished Medical Doctor and Public Health Expert. A Harvard-trained Deliverologist and Transformation Specialist, he has supported countries across health, education, economic development, and tax reforms. Dr. Addis is a leading expert in Ethiopian Health Policy and Global Health Reforms, having held significant roles, including Director General and Chief of Staff at the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and Head of the Ethiopian Tax Transformation Office. He also served as a Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company, where he led transformative initiatives in Ethiopia’s healthcare sector, Public and Social sectors. He has served as an Expert Faculty for the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program, mentoring African government officials on effective implementation of their reforms. A published author of 14 articles in renowned journals like The Lancet and co-author of two books, Dr. Addis holds a Doctor of Medicine Degree from Gondar University and master’s in public health from the University of South Africa. He continues to make significant contributions to global healthcare and public health policy from Addis Ababa, where he resides with his family. 

Evan Wang (王潇) is the 9th National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, the first male and Chinese individual to hold this title, and author of Slow Burn (Northwestern University Press, 2026). His work appears in POETRY Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Waxwing, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. He has been featured at and recognized by the Biden White House, the United Nations, the Smithsonian Institution, and Google DeepMind. Deemed a “prodigy” by Teen Vogue, Evan is a first-year student at Harvard College.

Alicia Ely Yamin, JD, MPH, PhD is a Lecturer on Law and the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; and Senior Adviser on Human Rights and Health Policy at Partners In Health. Known globally for her trans-disciplinary work in relation to economic and social rights, reproductive justice, the right to health, and the intersections between development paradigms and human rights, Dr. Yamin’s career has bridged academia and activism. She has lived in Latin America and East Africa for much of her professional life and worked with local advocacy organizations, including co-founding a program on health and human rights in the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (Lima, Peru; 1999). Dr. Yamin has served on numerous WHO and UN expert committees and regularly provides testimony and guidance to tribunals and legislative bodies around the globe in relation to the application of international and comparative law to health and sexual and reproductive rights issues.