Leadership & Staff

Dallas Swendeman is an Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine. He is an applied social and behavioral scientist whose work focuses on multi-level interventions at the intersection of empowerment, prevention, self-management and mobile and social media technologies. Dr. Swendeman has multi-disciplinary training in psychological and medical anthropology, sociology, organizational studies, epidemiology and community health sciences (public health).

Over the past 20 years, he has led and supported projects developing, testing, adapting and scaling up evidence-based interventions for HIV prevention, substance abuse, self-management and empowerment with youth, sex workers, and persons living with HIV. More recently, Dr. Swendeman's work has focused on mobile health ("mHealth") using text-messaging, interactive voice response, smartphone applications and social media for research and intervention. In particular, his work explores mixed-methods research and context sensing mobile technologies with adolescents and parents, mobile applications to support home visiting community health workers to address pre- and post-natal support and for sex workers around HIV/STD prevention. His work has been conducted with community-based partners in the U.S., India, and South Africa.

 

Craig Cohen, MD, MPH, is a professor in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. Since 1994, he has co- directed the collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) to advance the study of HIV and its intersection with reproductive health. He also directs the UCGHI GloCal Health Fellowship, a program that supports global health research opportunities to UC advanced doctoral and professional students, and UC and international post-doctoral fellows in 16 low- and middle-income countries around the world. He previously co-directed UCGHI.

Federico Castillo, PhD is an Environmental/Agricultural Economist with a PhD and undergraduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a Specialist at the College of Natural Resources, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley. He serves as Deputy Director for UCGHI Center for Planetary Health and is co-lead of the Latinx and the Environment Initiative at UC Berkeley. His research agenda centers on the socio-economic impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector in the US and other countries. In addition, he engages on research related to technology adoption and diffusion. He is currently involved in research with scholars from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), Arizona State University and the University of California at Santa Barbara among others. Dr. Castillo has taught courses related to sustainable business practices, migration to the United States, natural resource economics, and the economics of climate change. He enjoys teaching and working with and mentoring students.

Georgia Kayser, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Global and Environmental Health in the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Deputy Director of the University of California Planetary Health Center of Expertise. Her environmental health research focuses on adolescent and children’s environmental health, water quality, environmental determinants of risk, and environmental health inequities and disparities. In her research she has explored the factors that limit access to safe and sustainable drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) services, globally; identified environmental determinants of risk, including pesticide and microbiological contaminants in drinking water; and examined environmental health disparities that result from gender, racial/ethnic, and geographic inequities. This research informs environmental health programs and policy. Her methodological expertise is in the use of cross-sectional studies to explore WaSH risk factors for disease across countries, formative research to identify interventions, experimental and quasi-experimental methods to test specific interventions, and geospatial analysis to understand patterns of exposure. She has conducted research in over 20 countries across the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia with funding from government, international organization, and private sector sources.

Jennifer Wagman earned her PhD in Reproductive, Perinatal and Women’s Health and her Master’s degree of Health Science in International Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and a Bioethics and Health Policy Certificate from the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Her postdoctoral training, completed at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, was in alcohol and substance use, HIV and related infections. Since 2000, Dr. Wagman has collaborated with the Rakai Health Sciences Program to: examine the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV), reproductive health and HIV infection; create protocols for safe and ethical research on interpersonal violence; and lead intervention research to find effective, combination IPV and HIV prevention approaches in rural Uganda. More recently, Dr. Wagman expanded her research in Uganda to focus on the epidemiology of alcohol use and its association with IPV and HIV transmission, and throughout sub-Saharan Africa to examine the science of implementing proven successful violence and HIV prevention approaches. In California, Dr. Wagman leads UC Speaks Up, a public health research project to address and prevent sexual assault and dating violence on three University of California campuses. Since 2016, she has been the Director of Violence Prevention Research with the 10-campus UC Global Health Institute Center for Gender & Health Justice.

Madhavi Dandu, MD, MPH is a Professor of Medicine at UCSF and the Director of the UC Global Health Institute. She received her undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature and medical degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She completed her residency training in the Categorical Medicine Program at UCSF in 2003. Afterward, Dr. Dandu attended the University of California, Berkeley, and received a Masters in Public Health with a focus on international health and health and human rights. At UCSF, Dr. Dandu spends time in the inpatient clinical services supervising and teaching medical students and residents. Her main non-clinical areas of focus are global health education, curriculum development, and mentorship, especially in the areas of ethics and cultural humility. She has previously directed the Master of Science in Global Health program at UCSF and the Global Health Pathway/Area of Distinction for the Internal Medicine Residency. In addition, she previously co-directed the Global Health Core for the Division of Hospital Medicine and was a senior curriculum adviser for the HEAL Fellowship.

Dr. Dandu continues to pursue her research interests in human rights and global public health. She collaborates with colleagues at UCSF and several community-based organizations to create cultural humility training for public health professionals.

Maxwell Mattern, MS in Higher Education & Student Affairs is the Program Analyst for the UC Global Health Institute. Max joins UCGHI from the Youth Mental Health Academy where he served as the Learning Manager, developing a mental health curriculum for high school students passionate for the field. He also brings his experience from UC Berkeley where he served as Associate Director and Interim Director at New Student Services, facilitating programming yearly for the incoming 10,000 students. Max has more than 7 years of program development and coordination experience.

Melissa Smith, M.D., is a family medicine physician who has worked in primary care clinics in low-income communities in the US and Central America for three decades. Dr. Smith is the Director of Health Equity Initiatives at UC Santa Barbara, where she co-teaches a seminar on Community-based Participatory Research on health disparities, and is involved in collaborative efforts to address health concerns of historically marginalized communities in Santa Barbara County. She is also a member of UCGHI’s Black Lives Matter Task Force.

Dr. Smith has developed culturally sensitive training programs for community health workers and midwives in Nicaragua and Guatemala, and has been engaged in a Participatory Action Research project focused on maternal health in Mexico. She has served as medical editor and writer for Hesperian Health Guides, who produce widely used public health manuals on community health and empowerment. Dr. Smith is lead author of Hesperian's book, Health Actions for Women: Practical Strategies to Mobilize for Change, which is now translated into six languages and accessed by people around the globe on Hesperian’s open-source digital platform.

Dr. Smith obtained a BA from Harvard University and an M.D. from the University of Washington.

Ndola Prata, MD, MSc, a physician and medical demographer from Angola and the Associate Director of the UC Global Health Institute, earned her medical degree from the University of Angola and an MSc in medical demography from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Prata 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. Shortly after moving to the US, while beginning her tenure as a researcher and lecturer at UC Berkeley, she served as a demographer/analyst for the Centers for Disease Control's Division of Reproductive Health for six years, a role she resumed briefly from 2010 to 2011. Her research focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of family planning and maternal health interventions that maximize distribution and financing to increase access to contraceptives in developing countries, particularly for underserved populations. Her projects investigate strategies for harnessing existing resources, including human capacity and healthcare infrastructure, while also gathering evidence for setting priorities on national health agendas. 

Oladele Ogunseitan, PhD, MPH, serves as director of UCGHI's collaborative effort with the UC Office of the President's Innovative Learning Technology Initiative (ILTI), developing a series of online global health courses available to UC undergraduates system wide. He is the founding chair of UC Irvine’s Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention. He is also chair of UC Irvine’s Program in Public Health and a professor of social ecology and has operated as the co-director of the UC Irvine Framework Program in Global health since 2009. During 2016-2017, he worked with the U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Health and Biodefense on emerging policy issues. He also serves as the director of research education, training, and career development for the NIH-funded Institute for Clinical and Translational Science.

Paolo De La Cruz is a recent graduate from UC Irvine (UCI) with a BS in Public Health. He was a 2021 Global Service Scholar for the UCI Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation where he virtually interned under a nonprofit in South Africa. Throughout undergrad, he assisted with research investigating the moral distress of family medicine doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also led a research project to understand undergraduate mental health amidst the pandemic. As a former vice president and community outreach chair for Healing Through Humanities, an organization that combines health and the humanities, he assisted with the operations of a $6000-funded intergenerational photo narrative project. He appreciates the interdisciplinary nature of the field of global health and is particularly interested in pandemic preparedness and response.

Phuoc V. Le, MD, MPH, DTM&H is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at UCSF, and Assistant Professor of Public Health at UC Berkeley. Dr. Le completed a combined residency in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Global Health Equity at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. During residency, he worked with PIH to provide equitable health care in Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, and post-earthquake Haiti. With Dr. Sriram Shamasunder, he co-founded the nation’s first Global Health-Hospital Medicine Fellowship, and co-founded the HEAL Initiative in 2014.

Samantha (Sam) Ying is a professor in the Environmental Science Department.  She is passionate about her research, teaching, and, in particular, engagement with her students and community.  She is dedicated to empowering the disadvantaged and ensuring equity for all.  Sam’s research and teaching focus on chemical and biological processes within soils that shape water quality, food security, and the global cycles of critical elements such as carbon and nitrogen.  Her work seeks to provide soil and water management practices for a healthy and sustainable future while training the leaders of tomorrow.   Sam received her B.S. from UC Santa Barbara and Ph.D. from Stanford University; she joined the UCR faculty in 2015.

Sangeeta Tripathi is the Director of Strategy and Operations for the HEAL Initiative. Prior to joining HEAL, she has worked on the rapid acceleration of pediatric HIV treatment with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) in a number of countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Sangeeta has also worked extensively on strategies to scale the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) working for the UN system (UNICEF and the WHO), foundations and private sector (Johnson & Johnson's worldwide philanthropic giving), NGOs, and independently. She has focused on working with key stakeholders - especially Ministries of Health, partners, and local health workers, to build ever-more responsive and impactful programming at sub-national, national, and global levels to improve health systems and transform lives. Sangeeta earned her Bachelors in International Development Studies (Brown University) and a Masters in Public Policy (Harvard Kennedy School). At HEAL Sangeeta focuses on strengthening the HEAL team, their strategy, and their operational excellence

Dr. Sean Arayasirikul (they/them) is an Associate Professor In-Residence in the Department of Health, Society, and Behavior (DHSB) at UCI’s Program in Public Health (PPH). They earned their PhD in Medical Sociology from UCSF. Dr. Arayasirikul’s research is focused on the following lines of inquiry: 1) the examination of health disparities and inequity among sexual and gender minoritized (SGM) communities, particularly trans women and BIPOC communities; 2) the development and implementation science of systems-level, digital health interventions; and 3) liberatory applications of participatory approaches to surveillance and data democratization. They are the PI of an NIAID New Innovator Award (DP2) to measure intersectional stigma among SGM communities of color in the national House and Ballroom Community. As a RWJF Interdisciplinary Research Leader, their community-engaged research project called, "Not One More: Violence at the Intersection of Structural Racism and Transphobia & the Imperative to Value the Lives of Trans Women of Color," will use ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) to measure, characterize, and visualize the magnitude and types of intersectional violence that transgender women of color experience situated in time and place. We will develop a data democratization tool to engage public health and policy stakeholders to increase protections and structural accountability for trans and gender expansive communities.

Dr. Arayasirikul is deeply committed to teaching and mentorship as a community-grounded scholar, having come from the communities they collaborate with and serve in their research. They are especially proud to be the MPI of SHINE Strong (www.weshinestrong.org), the first NIMH-funded undergraduate training program to develop the next generation of HIV prevention scientists with expertise in trans and nonbinary population health. They are a Co-Investigator on research projects to advance health equity among trans women in Nepal, New Orleans, Louisiana, and young SGM men in Brazil.

Sriram Shamasunder, MD, DTM&H, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF. He completed his Internal Medicine residency at Harbor UCLA. He has worked extensively in Rwanda, Liberia, Haiti, Burundi, and India. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship where he studied implementation in resource-poor tribal areas in rural India. In 2010, he was named an Asia 21 fellow as well as the Northern California Young Physician of the Year. He co-founded HEAL in 2015. He is currently an Emerson Dial Fellow.

Stephanie Sumstine-Felice, MPH, is the Communications Specialist for UCGHI. Stephanie joins UCGHI from the UCLA Center for Community Health where she worked as a Project Director for six years working on research studies on substance use, sexual health, and addressing health disparities in historically underserved communities. Stephanie was the Center Coordinator for UCGHI’s Center for Gender and Health Justice (CGHJ) for over five years where she managed communications and the Center’s education and training programs. She has supported the CGHJ’s signature research project on local and global campus-based violence prevention since 2018. She is passionate about health equity, reproductive justice, addiction prevention, and sustainability. Prior to working at UCLA, Stephanie worked on community and place-based evaluation initiatives in Long Beach, including the Building Healthy Communities and Narrative Change Strategy for Youth Investment projects.

 

Sun Yu Cotter, MPH, is the deputy director for UCGHI and leads operations and strategic development. She is co-Chair of the UCGHI Black Lives Matter Task Force. Sun is a multi-lingual global health professional certified in mediation & conflict resolution and trained in restorative justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion champion with 15+ years of experience in academic, non-profit, and private settings. Sun is also a member of the UCOP Anti-Racism Working Group. Prior to UCGHI, she was a senior program manager at UCSF’s Institute for Global Health Sciences on a project aiming to improve the quality of maternal health, family planning and abortion care for women in Kenya and India. She also has extensive field experience implementing large clinical trials in Africa, including a study on childhood mortality and childhood morbidity. Her passion for global health began as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Uzbekistan.

Taylor Thomas, MPH, MA, is the Center Coordinator for the Center for Gender and Health Justice and the Program Coordinator for Wagman Lab in the Fielding School of Public Health-Community Health Sciences Department. Taylor completed her dual master’s program at UCLA, earning her MPH from Fielding's Community Health Sciences Department and an MA from the International Institute’s African Studies Department. During her program, Taylor was an active fellow in both the Maternal and Child Health Fellowship Program and the Leadership Education in NeuroDiversity Fellowship Program. She is passionate about neurodiversity advocacy, sustainability, and the intersection of afro-indigenous medical systems and allopathic medicine. Taylor currently focuses on the prevention of violence and the promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights through her coordination at Wagman Lab

Ushma Upadhyay, PhD, MPH is Associate Professor at UCSF and a public health Social Scientist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). She is also Co-Director of the University of California Global Health Institute’s Center for Gender & Health Justice. Dr. Upadhyay was born and raised near Boston, Massachusetts. As a person of South Asian descent, primarily raised by her mother who immigrated to the U.S. from Tanzania, she is drawn to reproductive health from a social justice perspective. Dr. Upadhyay has expertise in abortion safety, abortion access in the U.S., medication abortion, and state-level abortion restrictions. Her current research focuses on the safety, efficacy, and acceptability of telehealth for abortion care and how telehealth can increase reproductive equity. She has developed and validated two measures: the Reproductive Autonomy Scale and the Sexual and Reproductive Empowerment Scale for Adolescents and Young Adults, both of which researchers can use to quantitatively measure individual-level power in reproductive outcomes. She co-authored Family Planning: A Global Handbook for Providers, a Johns Hopkins/WHO/USAID publication. She earned a BA in Public Communication and International Studies from American University, her MPH from Columbia University, and her PhD from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Dr. Smith is the Associate Dean for Global Programs and a Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis. She has worked on One Health research and training projects across Africa, Asia, and in the Americas, where multidisciplinary teams innovate together to solve complex health problems. Waterborne, foodborne, and vectorborne zoonotic diseases are her main research focus, engaging with colleagues across veterinary medicine, human health, the social sciences and environmental disciplines. She currently leads the $85M USAID One Health Workforce – Next Generation Project which is active in 17 countries across Africa and Southeast Asia. She has received funding from diverse sources including the National Institutes of Health, the US Agency for International Development, and the US Department of Defense. Dr. Smith teaches epidemiology and population health using a One Health approach in the professional, graduate, and undergraduate programs at UC Davis, involving online, field, and didactic methods.