Global Health Advisors

Our Stanford Core Leadership Team and our External Advisors have expertise in a variety of content areas and medical specialties. Our advisors help to set the agenda for the Center as well as lead research projects, provide clinical care, and teach or mentor trainees all over the world.

Stanford Global Health Core Leadership

YVONNE A. MALDONDO, MD

Pediatric Infectious Disease

Dr. Maldonado is the director of Global Child Health and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Pediatrics. She served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and she led several domestic and international pediatric vaccine studies. Her research interests include the impact of rotavirus, measles, and polio vaccines on the epidemiology and prevention of childhood infections in low-resource populations and the prevention and treatment of perinatal HIV infection in the U.S., Mexico, and Africa. The chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, she has published more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and is co-editor of the textbook “Infectious Diseases of the Fetus and Newborn Infant.”

PAUL WISE, MD, MPH

Pediatrics and Health Policy

PAUL WISE, MD, MPH

Pediatrics and Health Policy

Dr. Wise’s research focuses on health inequalities, child health policy, and global child health. He leads a multidisciplinary initiative, Children in Crisis, which is directed at integrating expertise in political science, security, and health services in areas of civil conflict and unstable governance. Dr. Wise is a professor ofPediatrics and Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine and a senior fellow in the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also co-director of the March of Dimes Center for Prematurity Research at Stanford University.

GARY DARMSTADT, MD, MS

Maternal and Child Health

GARY DARMSTADT, MD, MS

Maternal and Child Health

Gary L. Darmstadt, MD, MS, is Associate Dean for Maternal and Child Health, and Professor of Neonatal and Developmental Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Dr. Darmstadt studies the effects of reducing gender inequality across the life course, ensuring child survival, and nurturing children’s growth and development on overall community health in developing countries. A passionate educator and advocate for reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition, Dr. Darmstadt came to Stanford from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he was senior fellow in the Global Development Program and led foundation initiatives to address gender inequalities and empower women and girls globally. Prior to this role, he led strategy development and implementation across maternal, newborn, and child health; family planning; and nutrition for the Foundation.

ANURAG MAIRAL, MD

Technology Innovation

ANURAG MAIRAL, MD

Technology Innovation

Dr. Anurag Mairal is an Adjunct Professor of Medicine and the Director, Global Outreach Programs at Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, Stanford University. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a Faculty Fellow and Lead for Technology Innovation and Impact at Center for Innovation in Global Health. In these roles, he leads initiatives focused on applying the biodesign process to resource-constrained settings globally. Further, he facilitates opportunities for students, faculty and fellows at Stanford to work on global healthcare needs. He is part of the founding faculty team for MED 232, Global Health: Scaling Health Technology Innovations in Low Resource Settings and BIOE 371, Global Biodesign: Medical Technology in an International Context, graduate-level courses offered to engineering, business, and medical students at Stanford University. Earlier, he served as Associate Director for the Stanford-India Biodesign and Singapore-Stanford Biodesign programs. He serves as the Founding Chair of BME IDEA APAC, a community of medtech innovation programs in Asia Pacific, partnering closely with the industry and academia in the region. He is also an Honorary Professor at University of Cape Town, South Africa. Concurrently, he is a co-founder and Executive Vice President of Orbees Medical, a SF Bay Area-based strategy consulting firm serving global healthcare industry, with a focus on medtech, pharmaceutical, and digital health industry.

GEOFF TABIN, MD

Ophthalmology

GEOFF TABIN, MD

Ophthalmology

Dr. Geoff Tabin is co-founder and chairman of the Himalayan Cataract Project and a professor of Ophthalmology and Global Medicine at Stanford University. He has published more than 45 peer-reviewed articles, two books, and a dozen book chapters related to his work in ophthalmology and the developing world. He is the fourth person in the world to reach the tallest peak on each of the seven continents. With his Himalayan Cataract Project co-founder, Dr. Sanduk Ruit, Tabin has trained physicians throughout Nepal who have reversed blindness in nearly one million people.

STEPHEN LUBY, MD

Infectious Disease

STEPHEN LUBY, MD

Infectious Disease

Dr. Luby studied philosophy and earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Creighton University. He earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester-Strong Memorial Hospital. He studied epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Luby’s previous positions include directing the Centre for Communicable Diseases at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh in Dhaka, Bangladesh from 2004 – 2012, conducting research and teaching epidemiology at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan from 1993 – 1998, and working as an epidemiologist in the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A. DESIREE LABEAUD, MD

Emerging Infections

A. DESIREE LABEAUD, MD

Emerging Infections

Dr. LaBeaud is a physician scientist, epidemiologist, and professor for the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stanford’s School of Medicine. She heads a clinical research lab focused on better understanding the risk factors and long-term health consequences of arboviral infections, specifically Rift Valley fever, chikungunya, dengue fever, and Zika. Her lab seeks to understand local perceptions of mosquito-borne disease risk in order to engage community action in prevention and is active in Kenya, Grenada, and Brazil. Dr. LaBeaud serves as a Deputy Editor for the Public Library of Sciences Neglected Tropical Diseases Journal, and as Editorial Advisor for the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. She studies the human health impacts of climate change including research focused on innovative solutions to the global plastic pollution crisis.

AMI S. BHATT

Global Oncology

AMI S. BHATT

Global Oncology

Dr. Bhatt created a multidisciplinary collaboration with academic, governmental, and nonprofit leaders in Nigeria to save lives in a country where half the population lives on less than $2 a day and cancer kills more people than infectious diseases. She cofounded an international nonprofit organization that brings the best cancer care to underserved patients around the world and distributes culturally appropriate educational materials to low-literacy patients.

SHERRY M. WREN, MD, FACS

Surgery

SHERRY M. WREN, MD, FACS

Surgery

Dr. Wren has extensive experience working in humanitarian crises in Sub-Saharan Africa and leads research projects that examine the epidemiology of surgical disease in conflict zones. She serves on the executive council and builds capacity through educational collaboratives with the College of Surgeons of East, Central, and Southern Africa, a 14-country consortium, with more than 100 training programs that shape and lead the training and retention of surgeons in the Sub-Saharan region. Dr. Wren facilitates and supports mentorship for women in surgical training to increase the number of women surgeons in the COSESCA region. She also developed the International Humanitarian Surgery course that provides high-resource physicians in skills and information critical to their working in low resource environments.

MICHELE BARRY, MD, FACP

Infectious Disease

MICHELE BARRY, MD, FACP

Infectious Disease

As a founder and director of the Stanford/Yale Global Health Scholars Program, Dr. Barry has sent more
than 2,000 physicians overseas to help strengthen health infrastructure in low-resource settings. She is an investigator in two NIH-HEPI (Health Professional Education Partnership) grants at the University of Zimbabwe and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In addition, she is part of an NIH consortium sending researchers overseas as Global Health Equity Scholars. She launched the Women Leaders in Global Health conferences and WomenLift Health, a leadership accelerator for women working in global health. Dr Barry received the Elizabeth Blackburn Award for mentorship of women in careers in medicine. She also enjoys mentoring men.

MANU PRAKASH, PHD

Bioengineering and Development of Innovative Technologies

MANU PRAKASH, PHD

Bioengineering and Development of Innovative Technologies

Dr. Prakash studies the structure, function, and evolution of organisms through the lens of physics. He advocates for frugal science and builds low-cost and powerful tools for field science, bringing science from the lab into parts of the world where traditional tools are not available or affordable. Dr. Prakash’s curiosity-driven research group invented a human-powered centrifuge, built with 20 cents worth of paper, plastic, and twine. This low-cost tool can separate blood into its individual components in 90 seconds. His lab also created the Foldscope, a paper origami microscope which he field-tested in Madagascar and which has been used to identify microscopic eggs of agricultural pests in India, to catalog the biodiversity of soil anthropods in the Amazon, and to detect bacteria in water samples in Mexico. Dr. Prakash’s team also created Abuzz, an iPhone app that identifies malaria-carrying mosquitoes by recording and measuring the frequency of their buzz.

LATHA PALANIAPPAN , MD

Non-Communicable Disease

LATHA PALANIAPPAN , MD

Non-Communicable Disease

Dr. Palaniappan’s research focuses on the study of diverse populations, chronic disease, and prevention. She seeks to address the gap in knowledge of health in Asian subgroups and other understudied racial/ethnic minorities. In partnership with the Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford Impact Labs, and non-profit organization Arogya World, Dr. Palaniappan’s work enhances existing chronic disease prevention programs in India that impact health behavior at a population level. Exploring the use of new health technologies in low-resource settings, Dr. Palaniappan works to improve population-based interventions, advance the research capacity of nonprofit partners, and seeks better ways to evaluate health outcomes for chronic disease prevention. She was recently awarded a Midcareer Investigator Award by the National Institutes of Health to provide mentoring to junior clinical investigators in the conduct of patient-oriented research. In 2018, she co-founded the Center for Asian Health Research and Education (CARE) at Stanford.

MATTHEW STREHLOW , MD

Emergency Medicine

MATTHEW STREHLOW , MD

Emergency Medicine

Dr. Strehlow is an internationally recognized educator focusing on emergency care in developing countries. His research focuses on maternal and child emergency referral systems, scalable in-service education using mobile technology and gaming, and the intersection of emergency care systems and gender-based violence. Dr. Strehlow is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University. He is Director of Stanford Emergency Medicine International (SEMI) and Director SEMI’s International EM Fellowship while also serving as Vice Chair of Strategy for the Dept of EM at Stanford. Having lived and worked in both Africa and Asia, Dr. Strehlow aims to develop longitudinal global collaborations that focus on strengthening local healthcare infrastructure.

Ana Crawford, MD, MSc

Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine

Ana Crawford, MD, MSc

Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine

Dr. Crawford, Director of Global Engagement Strategy in Stanford’s department of anesthesiology, is a board certified physician in both Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine and a leading advocate for global health equity. In 2011, she founded the Division of Global Health Equity within the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine. In addition to her clinical focus areas, Dr. Crawford has a passion for equitable medical education to improve healthcare access and outcomes. She has spent over a decade working to bring quality education and training through academic partnerships across the globe, primarily in underserved and variably-resourced areas. Working extensively in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily in Rwanda and Zimbabwe, she has also served as an educator in under-resourced areas within the borders of the United States. She holds an honorary appointment at the University of Rwanda as an Associate Professor.

Thomas Weiser, MD, MPH

Surgery

Thomas Weiser, MD, MPH

Surgery

Dr. Weiser is a general, emergency, and trauma surgeon, and surgical intensivist. He treats and cares for injured patients and those with acute surgical emergencies as well as manages critically ill surgical patients in the Intensive Care Unit. His research is focused on evaluating the role surgical care plays in the delivery of health services in resource-poor settings, in particular low- and middle-income countries. He is interested in barriers to access and provision of surgical care, the quality of surgical services, and outcomes research as well as the science of implementation, how improvements can be made, and how to strengthen compliance with best practices and change behaviors for the better. He works closely with Lifebox, a nonprofit focused on improving surgical and anesthetic safety worldwide, where he was previously the Consulting Medical Officer. From 2006-2009, he was part of the World Health Organization’s Safe Surgery Saves Lives program where he quantified the global volume of surgery and created, implemented, evaluated, and promoted the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist. He is a Program Director at Wellcome Leap where he leads Surgery:Assess/Validate/Expand (SAVE).

External Advisors

Diana Chapman Walsh

President Emerita, Wellesley College and Senior Advisor, Stanford Global Health

Diana Chapman Walsh

President Emerita, Wellesley College and Senior Advisor, Stanford Global Health

Diana Chapman Walsh was the twelfth president of Wellesley College and is a recognized leader in higher education. Her presidency, from 1993-2007, was marked by educational innovation, including a revision of the curriculum and expanded programs in global education, the humanities, internships and service learning, interdisciplinary teaching and learning, and religious and spiritual life.

Dr. Walsh currently serves on the governing boards of the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and its executive committee). Her recent board service includes the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the inaugural board of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (which she chaired), and the Mind and Life Institute. Prior to the Wellesley presidency, Dr. Walsh was Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Stuart Norman Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she chaired the Department of Health and Social Behavior. Before Harvard, she was a University Professor at Boston University and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health.

She has published and spoken widely on public health and higher education, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Center for Innovation in Global Health’s Climate Change and Health Initiative.

Cassia van der Hoof Holstein

Director of Global Health Equity, Emerson Collective and Senior Advisor, Stanford Global Health

Cassia van der Hoof Holstein

Director of Global Health Equity, Emerson Collective and Senior Advisor, Stanford Global Health

Cassia van der Hoof Holstein is a Fellow of the Emerson Collective and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. She chairs the Board of Directors of Plus 1, which connects recording artists, their audiences, and pragmatic social justice efforts, and serves on the Boards of Directors of the New Senior Investment Group (NYSE: SNR); PIVOT, a global health non-profit based Cassia van der Hoof Holstein is a Fellow of the Emerson Collective and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. She chairs the Board of Directors of Plus 1, which connects recording artists, their audiences, and pragmatic social justice efforts, and serves on the Boards of Directors of the New Senior Investment Group (NYSE: SNR); PIVOT, a global health non-profit working to break cycles of poverty and disease in and beyond rural Madagascar; and Agile Global Health (formerly known as A&K Global Health LLC), a private global healthcare management company. She is a Trustee of Partners In Health and a member of the Advisory Board of the Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment (COPE) Program in the Navajo Nation.

Katherine States Burke

Senior Advisor and DCI Fellow, Former Deputy Director of Stanford Global Health

Katherine States Burke

Senior Advisor and DCI Fellow, Former Deputy Director of Stanford Global Health

Katherine States Burke, MM, MSc, works to build cross-cutting teams to address global health problems. Educated at Harvard University, Ms. Burke began her career as a reporter, editor and publishing executive. After several years raising three boys, she returned to an early interest in health and earned a Master of Science in Global Health Sciences from the University of California, San Francisco. She also has a MM from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Prior to Stanford, Ms. Burke served as a Senior Fellow in Global Health Sciences at UCSF where she led the Centers of Excellence Project. She serves on the Board of Dean’s Advisers of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Her interests include building research, training and health leadership capacity in low-resource settings.

Herb Riband

Senior Advisor, Stanford Global Health

Herb Riband

Senior Advisor, Stanford Global Health

Herb Riband is an independent global healthcare advisor, working with a select group of startup companies, NGOs and academic professionals that are bringing truly innovative approaches to global health and healthcare delivery. He recently completed a 16-month fellowship at Stanford University’s Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI), which focused on global health and healthcare innovation. Prior to that, Herb had a diverse 31-year international career with leadership roles in multinational enterprises in biotechnology (Amgen), medical technology (Medtronic), consumer goods (Diageo), consulting (Ernst & Young) and law (Baker & McKenzie). He built international market access, healthcare policy, government affairs, strategic philanthropy, corporate communications and law functions for multinational corporations. In this regard, Herb led the launch of value-based healthcare delivery programs incorporating holistic “beyond the drug and device” solutions and promoting policies focused on measuring and improving patient health outcomes. He also built partnerships with health system stakeholders to accelerate patient access to appropriate biopharmaceutical and medical technology therapies, with a particular focus on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. A native of Pennsylvania (USA), Herb received advanced degrees from Cornell University and the University of Michigan Law School. He is a citizen of the United States and Switzerland.

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Global Health Advisors

Our Stanford Core Leadership Team and our External Advisors have expertise in a variety of content areas and medical specialties. Our advisors help to set the agenda for the Center as well as lead research projects, provide clinical care, and teach or mentor trainees all over the world.

Stanford Global Health Core Leadership

YVONNE A. MALDONDO, MD

Pediatric Infectious Disease

PAUL WISE, MD, MPH

Pediatrics and Health Policy

GARY DARMSTADT, MD, MS

Maternal and Child Health

ANURAG MAIRAL, MD

Technology Innovation

GEOFF TABIN, MD

Ophthalmology

STEPHEN LUBY, MD

Infectious Disease

A. DESIREE LABEAUD, MD

Emerging Infections

AMI S. BHATT

Global Oncology

SHERRY M. WREN, MD, FACS

Surgery

MICHELE BARRY, MD, FACP

Infectious Disease

MANU PRAKASH, PHD

Bioengineering and Development of Innovative Technologies

LATHA PALANIAPPAN , MD

Non-Communicable Disease

MATTHEW STREHLOW , MD

Emergency Medicine

Ana Crawford, MD, MSc

Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine

Thomas Weiser, MD, MPH

Surgery

External Advisors

Diana Chapman Walsh

President Emerita, Wellesley College and Senior Advisor, Stanford Global Health

Cassia van der Hoof Holstein

Director of Global Health Equity, Emerson Collective and Senior Advisor, Stanford Global Health

Katherine States Burke

Senior Advisor and DCI Fellow, Former Deputy Director of Stanford Global Health

Herb Riband

Senior Advisor, Stanford Global Health