About the authors

Brett D. Nelson, MD, MPH, DTM&H is Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and an attending pediatrician and global health faculty member in the Division of Global Health at MassGeneral Hospital for Children. His professional interests are advocacy and health care provision for vulnerable populations, particularly children and individuals affected by conflict and disaster. He helped establish the nation’s first Pediatric Global Health Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and was its first fellow. Dr Nelson has advanced degrees in public health (Johns Hopkins) and tropical medicine (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine). He has been involved in pediatric care, academic research, and consultancy in over a dozen crisis-affected countries while working for organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control, International Rescue Committee, International Red Cross and Red Crescent, and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Recently in Liberia, Dr Nelson served as Liberia’s Senior Pediatrician and as the Interim Chair of Pediatrics and Newborn Medicine for the country's sole teaching hospital. Dr Nelson directs a tropical medicine and global health course at Harvard Medical School. He is the editor of the Wiley-Blackwell global health textbook, Essential Clinical Global Health.

Ann Evensen, MD, FAAFP is Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin (UW) School of Medicine. ​ Dr Evensen is a 1995 graduate of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and completed a family medicine residency in Renton, Washington.  She was in private practice in Washington and rural Wisconsin before joining the UW Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (DFMCH) in 2005.  She is the Department’s Director of Global Health and residency faculty member.  Her clinical interests are global health, faculty development, postpartum hemorrhage, and the intersection of primary care and emergency care.  She was the inaugural course director and is an ongoing advisor for the Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO) programs in both Ethiopia (2010) and India (2011). She is a contributing editor and author in emergency obstetrics skills training curricula including ALSO, Basic Life Support in Obstetrics (BLSO), Comprehensive Advanced Life Support – Essentials (CALS-E), and the GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute’s Manual of Prehospital Emergency Care Protocols, 2nd edition which is used by over 20,000 Indian emergency medical technicians. She is a board member of the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Patient Safety and Maternity Care Board and the ALSO India Advisory Board.  Since 2013, she has been an advisor to the inaugural family medicine residency program in Ethiopia.

Russell E. Dawe, MD, MDiv, CCFP is Assistant Professor of Family Medicine with the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. He is a family physician and a palliative care consultant, with experience in low risk obstetrics. His professional interests are capacity building in global health and care of underserved populations, domestically and internationally. He is Director of Memorial University’s Care of Underserved Populations Enhanced Skills Program. His research interests include capacity building for health care in low-resource environments, medical education, and program evaluation. His international health experience includes collaboration for medical education and program evaluation in Nepal, Uganda, and Pakistan. He is a volunteer with Academics Without Borders, Senior Advisor to Global Familymed Foundation, and an active member of several working groups for the College of Family Physicians of Canada’s Besrour Centre, dedicated to international collaboration for advancing family medicine globally. 

Rasa Izadnegahdar, MD, MPH completed his training in pediatrics at the Boston Combined Residency Program, a partnership between Boston University's Boston Medical Center and Harvard University's Children's Hospital Boston and a Pediatric Global Health Research Fellowship at Boston University's Center for Global Health and Development. His main interests include childhood pneumonia, community-based interventions, and care systems aimed at improving childhood survival as well as global health education. Dr Izadnegahdar's current research focuses on the etiology and diagnosis of childhood pneumonia in an HIV-endemic population. In the past, he has worked predominantly in Cambodia and Western Africa as a researcher as well as a consultant with local non-governmental organizations working in the health sector. In Canada and the US, he has worked on increasing the role of global health in medical education. He led the initial effort to document the nature of global health training in Canadian Medical Education, laying the groundwork for the development of a standardized competency-based approach to global health within medical curricula. Dr Izadnegahdar holds a medical degree from McGill University and a Bachelor of Science Honors degree in Life Sciences and International Development Studies from Queen's University, Canada.

​Lauren Hall, MD, MSc completed here residency in pediatrics at Emory University, where she is acted as Assistant Program Director and Chair of the Global Health Organization of Pediatrics at Emory.  Her academic interests are in global pediatric and maternal-child health, HIV and orphan health, malnutrition, and neglected tropical diseases.  Her clinical work and research interests have focused on improving pediatric health outcomes in resource-poor settings through provision of sustainable, evidence-based, community-driven medical services.  During her residency, Dr Hall helped establish a global health curriculum for medical students and residents, and has collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control, Carter Center, Emory School of Public Health, and Global Health Institute on projects to enhance resident global health education.  She attended medical school at Emory University and received her MSc in the Control of Infectious Disease from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in addition to attending the DTM&H course.  Her Masters work was completed at the Uganda Virus Research Institute in Entebbe where her research centered on an analysis of infant mortality.  Dr. Hall is currently based in Swaziland, where she serves as a Fellow with Texas Children’s Global Health Service Corps (successor to Baylor Pediatric AIDS Corps).

​Patrick T. Lee, MD, DTM&H co-founded the Global Primary Care Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. The MGH Global Primary Care Program provides systems based training for internal medicine residents at the intersection of global health and primary care across a range of international and domestic settings, and is the first program of its kind in the nation. Dr. Lee also served as Medical Director of Tiyatien Health, a sister organization of Partners In Health that provides health care and social services in rural Liberia, and is Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School where he co-founded and co-directs the elective course Clinical Topics in Global Health. He has authored training curricula for Partners In Health and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, has published part of his work in the Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and Health Affairs, and is preparing two chapters on chronic disease care for Principles of Medicine in Africa, a major teaching text in many African medical schools and hospitals. Dr. Lee graduated BA in English from Princeton University and MD from the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his residency training in internal medicine and primary care at the Massachusetts General Hospital and holds an advanced diploma in tropical medicine from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.