TFGH - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director, Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy
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- Director, Brighton Collaboration
- Director, Global and Federal Affairs
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- Global Health Ethics Officer & Director, Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics
David Addiss, MD, MPH, is Director and Founder of The Task Force's Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics. He has held many positions at The Task Force including Director of Children Without Worms and Senior Advisor of the Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy. In Dr. Addiss' current role he helps guide The Task Force's programs to operate ethically and be guided by their core values, including that of compassion.
Prior to joining The Task Force, Dr. Addiss was a Physician Consultant at Holos Associates, PLC, where he provided services in preventive medicine, science, and global health. In addition, Dr. Addiss taught at Kalamazoo College, where he was a fellow at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.
Dr. Addiss was also a Senior Program Officer at the Science and Spirituality Program at the Fetzer Institute in Michigan where he was responsible for directing and planning Fetzer's research program. While at Fetzer, Dr. Addiss collaborated with the World Health Organization on violence prevention and with The Task Force on the role of compassion in global health.
Prior to Fetzer, Dr. Addiss spent 20 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where he conducted research on the prevention and control of parasitic diseases, with an emphasis on lymphatic filariasis and other neglected tropical diseases. He Co-founded and Co-directed the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center for Control and Elimination of Lymphatic Filariasis in the Americas, based at CDC. He also served as CDC's liaison to the Mectizan® Expert Committee and as a Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization and the UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases.
Dr. Addiss received his medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia and a master's in public health from The Johns Hopkins University.
Job Titles:
- Chief Business Strategy Officer
Header photo caption: Cattle herders guide their livestock down a road in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Photo courtesy of Brent Stirton/Getty Images for ITI.
Job Titles:
- Director, Polio Eradication Surge Capacity Team
Fabien Diomande, MD, MSc, is the Director for Polio Eradication Surge Capacity Program at The Task Force for Global Health. He leads their work on Polio Eradication, through partnerships with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
In his previous role, Fabien worked with the UNICEF Regional for Office for West and Central Africa (WCARO), where he served as the Regional Advisor for Polio Eradication Initiative, overseeing program planning and implementation, and coordinating partners' support.
Before joining WCARO, Fabien served in various positions with CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) in his home country of Cote d'Ivoire and at the CDC's headquarters in Atlanta, including CDC Medical Researcher and Team Lead for HIV care and treatments in Abidjan, WHO Medical Officer for Polio/EPI in Niger and Nigeria, CDC's subject matter expert for the Meningitis Vaccine Project in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He also acted as the CDC Program Evaluation Branch's Focal Person for Madagascar, Guinea, and the Lake Chad Basin.
Fabien holds a Medical Doctor degree from the University of Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire, and a Master of Science degree in disease control from the Prince Leopold Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp - Belgium. Fabien was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Positive Health Program at the San Francisco General Hospital, University of California and at the Exchange Research Program in Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Consultant to the World Health Organization
- Director, Coalition for Global Hepatitis Elimination
John W. Ward, MD, is a Senior Scientist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) assigned to The Task Force for Global Health where he acts as the Director of the Coalition for Global Hepatitis Elimination. Over a 13-year tenure as Director of the CDC's Division of Viral Hepatitis, Dr. Ward was responsible for viral hepatitis surveillance, prevention, and research. At the national level, he led development of recommendations for hepatitis A and hepatitis B vaccination and hepatitis B and hepatitis C testing and linkage to care.
Job Titles:
- Director, Respiratory Virus Prevention Programs
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- Director, Voices for Vaccines
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- Director, Health Campaign Effectiveness Coalition
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- Director, MedSurplus Alliance
Header photo caption: A community health worker collects information from a family during a onchocerciasis (river blindness) mapping campaign in Ethiopia.
Job Titles:
- Chief External Relations Officer
Job Titles:
- Director, Center for Vaccine Equity
Job Titles:
- Director of the Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center
- Director, Neglected Tropical Disease Support Center
Patrick Lammie, PhD, is the Director of the Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center (NTD-SC). In this role, Dr. Lammie provides technical guidance and strategic oversight to NTD-SC's operational research projects.
Dr. Lammie was formerly the Senior Staff Scientist in the Disease Elimination and Control Group in the Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He worked at the CDC for more than 20 years where his principal focus had been lymphatic filariasis. His laboratory was heavily invested in efforts to develop new tools and strategies to monitor and evaluate filariasis and other neglected tropical diseases.
Dr. Lammie serves on the World Health Organization's NTD Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group and the Executive Group of the Global Alliance to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis.
Dr. Lammie received his doctoral degree from Tulane University and completed doctoral research on the immunology of experimental filariasis.
Job Titles:
- Director, International Trachoma Initiative and Interim Director, Children Without Worms
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- Scientific Director, Brighton Collaboration
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- Information Systems
- JM, MBA / Director, Public Health Informatics Institute
Vivian Singletary, JM, MBA, serves as Director of the Public Health Informatics Institute (PHII). In this role, she guides PHII's work to improve health outcomes worldwide by strengthening health practitioners' abilities to use information effectively. Ms. Singletary's experience combines almost 20 years in systems development and in public health. Earlier in her career, she served in leadership positions in supply chain management and information systems implementation for Home Depot and M&M before transitioning into public health. She was introduced to The Task Force for Global Health in 2009 as the Global Supply Chain Manager for the International Trachoma Initiative, where she oversaw the pharmaceutical supply chain of over $1 billion in Zithromax donations and built in-country capacity for over 15 African and Asian countries.
Ms. Singletary has played an integral role in developing PHII's global portfolio. Her work for the Institute began with improving, designing and analyzing business processes and developing functional requirements for health insurance information systems. She established PHII's Requirements Laboratory business unit in 2012. As the unit's director, Ms. Singletary played an essential part in managing informatics projects in both the U.S. and in developing countries. Key projects include her leadership role in developing the African Workforce Planning project-a tool that helps allocate health care practitioners to areas of greatest need in Mozambique and Tanzania-and acting as director of informatics practice for the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) initiative, which addresses the causes of childhood mortality in developing countries. She holds a masters of business administration degree from Kennesaw State University, and has a juris master degree from Emory University School of Law, with a focus on global health. She also holds a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
William C. Watson Jr. co-founded The Task Force along with Dr. Foege. As Deputy Director, Watson was the operations man behind the vision for The Task Force, which was created initially to increase global childhood immunization rates. Both former CDC employees and often called "the Two Bills," Dr. Watson and Dr. Foege held their first Task Force staff meeting, along with former CDC employee Carol Walters, around Dr. Watson's kitchen table.
Dr. Watson was a Prisoner of War in World War II which led him to public health. He was one of the CDC's first Public Health Advisor and the CDC has since then honored his career by naming their highest honor, the William C. Watson Jr. Medal of Excellence. Learn more about Dr. Watson's contributions to improving the health of people worldwide here.
Dr. Foege was Chief of the CDC Smallpox Eradication Program and was appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1977. In 1984, Dr. Foege co-founded The Task Force for Child Survival (now called The Task Force for Global Health), heading up the effort to increase global child immunization rates.
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- Executive Vice President
Job Titles:
- Director, Mectizan® Donation Program