GLOBAL WACH - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Student in the UW Department of Epidemiology
Adino Tsegaye is a PhD student in the UW Department of Epidemiology. He completed his BS and MPH degrees at the University of Gondar, Ethiopia, and practiced as a clinician in different health facilities in Ethiopia. Besides, he was a faculty in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Gondar and has been teaching and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students and participating in various research projects. He has sound research and project management experience in the area of infectious diseases, nutrition, and maternal and child health. Adino was a former fellow and project manager of the UW SCOPE Program's FLAME project. Currently, Adino works as a research assistant under the mentorship of Dr. Judd Walson on the CHAIN-COVID project aimed at better understanding the effect of COVID-19 in resource-limited settings.
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Director of Research Operations
Job Titles:
- Budget Fiscal Analyst / Research and Data Staff
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Center Co - Director / Co - Director, Implementation Science
Anna Larsen received her PhD in Epidemiology at University of Washington in 2022 and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Departments of Epidemiology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Anna's research focuses on perinatal mental health and linked infant-child outcomes, particularly among populations at high risk for HIV and among women living with HIV. Her dissertation, supported by an NIH F31 Fellowship, leveraged data from the "PrEP Implementation for Mothers in Antenatal Care (PrIMA, PIs: Baeten, John-Stewart)" study to evaluate maternal depression and adverse perinatal outcomes among Kenyan mother-infant pairs. Anna's postdoctoral research, supported by an NIH F32 Fellowship, expands this work to focus on maternal anxiety, depression, and stress and linkages with mother-infant attachment and infant social-emotional development among Kenyan mother-child pairs enrolled in the PrIMA Extension cohort (PI: Pintye). To pursue her interests in digital mental health interventions, Dr. Larsen serves as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Behavioral Research in Technology and Engineering (BRiTE) Center. Prior to her doctoral work, Anna served as a Research Manager at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, a Surveillance Fellow at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Pretoria, South Africa, a Research Assistant at Columbia University, and a Program Assistant at PATH. Dr. Larsen holds a MPH in Epidemiology from Columbia University and a BS in Biology and Public Health from University of Washington.
Job Titles:
- Program Operations Specialist
Job Titles:
- Co - Director, Implementation Science
Job Titles:
- Director, Leadership Develpment
Caren Mburu, MBChB, MMed is a pediatrician and researcher at a University of Nairobi/University of Washington collaborative organization. She completed a Master of Medicine (MMed) degree in Pediatrics and Child health in 2012 at the University of Nairobi. Caren has over six years of experience in Pediatric HIV and been involved in several pediatric and adolescent HIV studies including the Adolescent Transition to Adult HIV care for Adolescents Living with HIV in Kenya (ATTACH) and the Simulated Patient Encounters to promote Early Detection and Engagement in Care (SPEED) studies.
Through collaborations with the national HIV program and other organizations including the Kenya Pediatrics Research Consortium (KEPRECON), Caren has had the opportunity to implement various pediatric and adolescent HIV studies.
Caren's primary mentors are Prof Grace John- Stewart, Prof Dalton Wamalwa, and Dr. Kristin Beima-Sofie. She began her MPH coursework at the University of Washington in September 2020. Caren would love to mentor upcoming researchers using the knowledge and skills she gains from the MPH program at the University of Washington. Her research interests include implementation science research for pediatric and adolescent HIV programs, cytomegalovirus (CMV), vaccinology in the context of HIV and emerging infectious diseases.
Job Titles:
- Research Scientist / Kenyatta National Hospital
Danae Black is a PhD Candidate in Epidemiology at the University of Washington. Danae received her Master's in Public Health in Global Health Epidemiology from The George Washington University. During her master's level studies, she worked as an assistant study coordinator for the Kenya Medical Research Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducting a diagnostic TB trial among children under five. Danae's interests include tuberculosis, global health, and infectious disease epidemiology. Since beginning her training at UW, Danae worked with the Strategic Analysis, Research, and Training (START) Center conducting a technical literature review and analytic support to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and global and public health decision-makers. Danae currently works with the Adolescent Transition To Adult Care for HIV-infected adolescents in Kenya (ATTACH) study, assessing tuberculosis preventive treatment utilization among HIV-infected adolescents and young adults.
Dickens Onyango is a Kenyan medical doctor with a young but growing experience in childhood infectious diseases research coupled with extensive experience in public health. Dickens earned his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Nairobi and Master of Science in epidemiology from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and the Kenya Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Management Training Program (FELTP). Dickens recently completed the Fogarty Global Health Fellowship with the Northern Pacific Global Health (NPGH) consortium through the University of Washington under the mentorship of Dr. Sylvia LaCourse, Dr. Grace John-Stewart, and Dr. John Kinuthia. For his Fogarty project, Dickens evaluated the isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) cascade in a retrospective cohort and assessed adherence to IPT in a prospective cohort of children living with HIV in western Kenya. Dickens is also a co-investigator for the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) in which a global network of sites conducts surveillance on definitive causes of death among children under-five years of age through minimally invasive tissue sampling.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director, Pediatrics
Dorothy Mangale is a PhD student in Global Health-Implementation Science Track at the University of Washington. She holds a BA in Biology from the University of Chicago and a MSc in Global Health from the Duke Global Health Institute. Dorothy's research interests include infant and child survival, and sexual and reproductive health of adolescent girls and young women (specifically how to improve access to, and quality of family planning, HIV, and cervical cancer prevention and treatment services for this population). Her dissertation work at Global WACh involves applying implementation science frameworks and theories to evaluate the uptake of, and factors influencing the success of the Adolescent Transition Package, an intervention package designed to improve HIV disclosure and transition of adolescents from pediatric to adult HIV care in Kenya. In addition, Dorothy is a Research Assistant at the UW International Clinical Research Center managing the database for the JiPime-JiPrEP trial and conducting a health economic evaluation of a PrEP optimization intervention.
Dr. Nancy Mwongeli is the lead Medical Officer and the intermittent acting Head of department for the Research and Programs Department at Kenyatta National Hospital. She is an upcoming Early Investigator and her research focuses HIV/AIDS, particularly Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), Implementation Science and Policy development. Dr. Mwongeli has been coordinating several PrEP implementation projects since 2018 and she is currently pursuing a Masters of Public Health - Global Health track at the University of Washington. Her vision is to contribute to scientific knowledge through evidence-based research, to be engaged in policy formulation, and to effectively bridge the know-do gap through program implementation. Working in a resource-limited environment, it is clear to her that evidence-based research and preventive policy formulation have a greater impact on the population in developing countries and are more cost-effective than individualized curative services.
Dr. Nyawira Gitahi, MBChB, MPH, is a medical doctor trained at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. She completed her MPH program from the Moi University and is currently a PhD student at the Institute of Infection, Disease, and Tropical Medicine (ITROMID) at Jomo Kenyatta University in Kenya. Her career began as a research physician in the PrEP implementation trials among discordant couples in the Nairobi site under the Partners in prevention research collaboration. Since then, she has built a public health career implementing HIV treatment and prevention public health programs and in maternal, child health, and adolescent community-based interventions in Kenya. She is passionate about adolescent Sexual Reproductive health and mental health.
Dr. Gitahi is currently a UW International AIDS Training and Research Program (IARTP) trainee at the University of Washington. Her primary mentors are Professors Grace John-Stewart, Dalton Wamalwa, Elizabeth Bukusi, and Dr. Kristin Beima-Sofie. She is working towards becoming an independent implementation science researcher focused on identifying facilitators and barriers to implementing evidence-based interventions in adolescent health. She is currently working on a nested study exploring the scalability of transition assessment and preparation interventions within the Adolescent Transition to Adult HIV care for Adolescents Living with HIV in Kenya (ATTACH) study. Her research interests include implementation science research for pediatric and adolescent living HIV, mental health screening and access to services among adolescents and young people and exploring interventions improving maternal health outcomes and SRH/FP among adolescents,
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Center Founding Director
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Center Co - Director
Job Titles:
- Faculty Co - Director, HIV and Co - Infections through the Lifecycle Priority Area
Jill Neary received her MPH from the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington in 2016. She is currently a Research Coordinator in the Department of Global Health. At the University of Washington, Jill has been involved with maternal and child health research in Kenya, including the Evaluation of Lifelong ART and Early Infant Testing and Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV in Kenya (Option B+) project and the Saliva Testing and Video Information to expand Uptake of Pediatric HIV Testing (STEP-UP) study. For her master's thesis, she analyzed baseline data from the Developing Adolescent Strategies for HIV Testing (DASH) study to assess the role of support people in adolescent HIV testing. She has also worked at the Washington State Department of Health as a Zika virus epidemiologist and a foodborne illness investigator.
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Managing Director
Job Titles:
- Grant and Program Manager
Job Titles:
- Associate Director, Obstetrics & Gynecology
Job Titles:
- Center Director
- Center Co - Director
Ruchi Tiwari is a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology.
Samantha Kaplan is a recent graduate from University of Washington's Internal Medicine Residency Program and will be starting Infectious Disease Fellowship in July 2021. She received her MD at Yale University. During medical school, she was a Fogarty Global Health Fellow in Cape Town, South Africa, conducting research on the risk factors and outcomes of HIV patients who disengaged from antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Khayelitsha, South Africa. While in residency at University of Washington, Sam has worked with Dr. Sylvia LaCourse on the Mother Infant TB Infection Prevalence and Incidence Study ("MITIPS"), comparing the response to the tuberculosis (TB) Interferon Gamma Release Assay between HIV infected and uninfected pregnant women. Her ongoing interests include global public health, epidemiology, TB, HIV, and emerging infections.
Job Titles:
- Senior Data Manager & Analyst, Data Team Lead
Job Titles:
- Faculty Co - Director, HIV and Co - Infections through the Lifecycle Priority Area