Harvard Global Health Institute

Join us for this informal in-person session for Harvard undergraduates to connect with our current 2023 HGHI Burke Global Health Fellow, Shela Sridhar, MD, MPH. Learn about her career journey in global health over pizzas and soft drinks! Shela Sridhar is a 2023 HGHI Burke Global Health Fellow. She is an internal medicine and pediatrics-trained physician working as a hospitalist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH). She completed a Global Health Service Delivery Fellowship at BCH where she worked on health system strengthening initiatives.

In-person event. Available to Harvard Undergraduate Students only. In-person capacity is limited and available on a first come first serve basis. The Harvard Global Health Institute  is pleased to welcome Dr. Mangal Rawal, Vice Chancellor of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences (KAHS), a medical university in one of the most remote areas of the world, to Harvard’s campus on Wednesday, February 28th. In this interactive event, Dr. Rawal will discuss rural health equity and share the mission, achievements, operations, and challenges of running a medical university in a remote region. The conversation will be moderated by Pradish Poudel, MD, graduate student in Global Health Delivery at Harvard Medical School. Students will get insider knowledge about health equity in rural areas such as Karnali, Nepal, and gain insight on the challenges and inner workings of health organizations like KAHS. Karnali Academy of Health Sciences (KAHS) is a medical university established by the government of Nepal to enable access to quality healthcare services and education at an affordable cost for the people of under resourced areas in Jumla. Dr Rawal, the Vice Chancellor of KAHS, has played a pivotal role in establishing and advancing the organization, setting an example for how to successfully operate a medical university in one of the most remote areas of the world. Mangal Rawal, MD, MPA was born in a remote village of the Karnali Province in Nepal. He defied the odds to pursue education, completing traditional schooling in his village before advancing for further studies. Despite limited resources, he obtained his MBBS/MD from BPKIHS and Residency in Orthopedics from NAMS, Kathmandu, both on government scholarships. Following this, he pursued an AOA Fellowship in Trauma in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and earned a master’s in public administration (MPA) from Tribhuvan University. Recognized for his dedication to rural health, he was appointed as the Vice Chancellor of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences (KAHS) by then Prime Minister of Nepal, becoming the youngest Vice Chancellor in Nepalese history. His tenure witnessed groundbreaking initiatives, including establishing undergraduate and postgraduate medical education programs in a remote medical school. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his leadership as the hospital director of KAHS earned him the prestigious President’s Medal for extraordinary contributions. Driven by a vision to transform KAHS into a center of excellence for rural health, medicinal herbs research, and mountain medicine, Dr. Rawal remains committed to serving the communities of Karnali with clinical expertise and social advocacy.

Pathways to Global Health is an informal monthly series for Harvard undergraduate students to connect with global health experts and learn about their career journey. We are excited to have Lao-Tzu Allan-Blitz, 2023 Burke Global Health Fellow, as our speaker. Topic: Health tech in resource-deprived settings, ultrasound diagnostics, community-based intervention design Dr. Lao-Tzu Allan-Blitz is an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an internal medicine physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also a fellow in point-of-care ultrasonography through the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Allan-Blitz earned his undergraduate degree in interdisciplinary studies with a colloquium in Happiness from New York University, his medical degree from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and completed a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. He was also the chief resident of the Doris and Howard Hiatt Residency in Global Health Equity. He subsequently obtained his master’s in public health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Allan-Blitz’s research focuses on bridging the diagnostic equity gap in resource-limited settings, either through implementing existing technology such as point-of-care ultrasound, designing and leading educational curricula, or developing novel low-cost molecular diagnostic assays. His work has been conducted across Peru, South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Lesotho, Madagascar, and rural Australia. *This event is for Harvard undergraduate students only. Lunch will be served.