Plenary I
COVID-19: Blueprint for Hope
Keynote speaker
Jonna Mazet, DVM, PhD
Executive Director, One Health Institute
Project Director, One Health Workforce: Next Generation Project
Chair, National Academies’ One Health Action Collaborative
Co-Vice Chair, UC Global Health Institute Board of Directors
Jonna Mazet, DVM, MPVM, PhD, is a Professor of Epidemiology and Disease Ecology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and Executive Director of the UC Davis One Health Institute. Currently, Dr. Mazet is the Co-Director of the US Agency for International Development’s One Health Workforce – Next Generation, an $85 million educational strengthening project to empower professionals in Central/East Africa and Southeast Asia to address complex and emerging health threats, including antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic diseases. She is the Principal Investigator of and served as the Global Director of PREDICT Project for 10 years, a greater than $200 million viral emergence early warning project under USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats Division. She was appointed to the National Academies Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, which was created to assist the federal government with critical science and policy issues related to the COVID-19 crisis and other emerging health threats.
Plenary II
COVID-19: Mapping and Addressing Gender and Socioeconomic Disparities
Ndola Prata MD, MSc
Professor, Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health, UC Berkeley
Director, Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability
Co-Director Center of Expertise in Women's Health, Gender and Empowerment, UC Global Health Institute
Ndola Prata is a physician and medical demographer. She began her career practicing medicine in Angola for 10 years and served as Head of the Social Statistics Department at the National Institute of Statistics of Angola. Dr Prata’s current research is based in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on family planning, abortion, and maternal and adolescent sexual and reproductive health and mortality. Her research focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of reproductive and maternal health interventions that maximize distribution and financing mechanisms to increase access to contraceptives, particularly for the underserved populations. Her projects investigate strategies for harnessing existing resources, including human capacity and health care infrastructure while also gathering evidence for setting priorities on national women’s health agendas. Dr. Prata teaches courses and has published extensively on topics related to family planning, financing and ability to pay for reproductive health programs, safe abortion, adolescent sexual and reproductive health, priorities for maternal health and the use of misoprostol in obstetrics.
Panelists
COVID-19: Updates from Africa, India, and South America
Elizabeth Bukusi, MBChB, MD, MPH, PhD
Chief Research Officer, Kenya Medical Research Institute
Co-Director, KEMRI-UCSF Infectious Disease Research Training Program
Principal Research Officer, Center for Microbiology Research, KEMRI
Honorary Lecturer, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Nairobi
Associate Research Professor, Departments of Global Health and Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Washington
Since 1995, Dr. Bukusi has served as the Co-Director of the UCSF-Kenya Medical Research Institute's collaborative Research Care and Treatment Program (RCTP). Since 2004, she has been co-PI of the CDC/PEPFAR-funded Kenya-based Family AIDS Care and Education Services (FACES) HIV care and support program. As part of FACES and in collaboration with Dr. Craig Cohen, she developed the Student Training Elective Program (STEP), which places medical students and residents in FACES clinics. She has over 15 years experience conducting research in HIV prevention, care, and treatment among women and men in Kenya. Her research focuses on development of HIV prevention technologies, HIV care and treatment, and ethics in research.
Ramanan Laxminarayan, PhD
- Director and Senior Fellow, The Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy
Affiliate Professor, Global Health, University of Washington
Laxminarayan is founder and director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP) in Washington, D.C., a senior research scholar at Princeton University and affiliate professor at the University of Washington. Since 1995, Laxminarayan has worked to improve the understanding of antibiotic resistance as a problem of managing a shared global resource. His work encompasses extensive peer-reviewed research, public outreach, and direct engagement across Asia and Africa. Laxminarayan served on the President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s antimicrobial resistance working group. He is series editor of the Disease Control Priorities for Developing Countries, 3rd edition. In 2019, he received the the Birla Institute of Technology and Science's Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Andres (Willy) Lescano, PhD
Associate Professor, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia
Andres Lescano has a PhD in Global Epidemiology and Disease Control and also Masters’ degrees in Biostatistics and Health Policy from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an Associate Professor at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH), and has adjunct appointments at the Tulane, Johns Hopkins, Wake Forest and Texas Medical Branch universities. He leads the Emerging Infections and Climate Change Unit and Masters’ and Doctoral programs in Epidemiological Research at UPCH. Between 2002 and 2015 he directed the Public Health Training Program and Parasitology Department at the US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 6 in Peru, and between 2017-8 he was the Director General of Peru’s National Center for Epidemiology, Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC Peru. Lescano has trained thousands of post-graduate students under major capacity building efforts of regional impact.