Past Visiting Students and Scholars from HSPH
Dr. Sima Shah, Visiting HSPH student and former PUKAR Senior Research Coordinator
Dr. Shah holds a PharmD from the University of Illinois and first visited PUKAR as a master’s student at HSPH. She returned to PUKAR as interim Senior Research Coordinator in May 2010, and has continued her investigations of medical representatives in the Kaula Bandar community with the support of PUKAR
Laura Khan, Visiting HSPH student
While a master of science student at the Harvard School of Public Health, Laura worked with PUKAR’s team during the summer of 2010 on their Health Cities Wealthy Cities Project to investigate the determinants of women’s delivery practices in Kaula Bandar. Her findings on the importance of social capital and networks, connections maintained with the rural native village, and women’s lack of decision-making power have been written into her masters thesis as well as various papers for publication. Laura’s interest in maternal and reproductive health developed when she was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Fiji Islands (2006-2006) where she worked with an Indian woman’s group on social infrastructure creation, health promotion, and income-generating projects. She continues to write, study, and work at the intersection of human rights, health, and social justice for marginalized populations. Laura has a BA in Psychology and Spanish from Tufts University and will begin her PhD in Demography and Social Policy at Princeton University in the fall of 2011.
Joya Banerjee, Visiting HSPH student
Joya Banerjee conducted a study and wrote her masters thesis on child health and immunization status in Kaula Bandar as a visiting scholar from the Harvard School of Public Health, where she obtained her Master of Science in Global Health and Population. Joya is the co-founder of the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS, a network of over 5,000 young people fighting the spread of HIV and AIDS in 173 countries worldwide. She currently works on gender and medical male circumcision for HIV prevention in South Africa at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
More information about Joya is available at: http://profiles.takingITglobal.org/jbanerjee
Adriane Lesser, Visiting HSPH student
Adriane Lesser received a Master of Science degree in Global Health and Population from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2010, and a BA degree in International Relations (Global Health and Environment track) from Brown University in 2008. Her Master’s thesis featured original field research on environmental determinants of health in the Kaula Bandar settlement that she and PUKAR conducted in 2009. While a student, Adriane also engaged in field studies of health systems and health care reforms in Chile, Thailand, and South India. Following the completion of her Master’s degree, Adriane was a Council of Women World Leaders Public Health Fellow at the Ministry of Public Health in Quito, Ecuador. She is now based at the Duke Global Health Institute, where she works on malaria research.
Dana Thomson, Visting HSPH student
Dana collaborated with PUKAR researchers in 2010 on a project to map various aspects of health in Kaula Bandar using GIS technology. For more information on this project, please see the research projects section. Dana’s brief biography will be uploaded soon.
Heather Lanthorn, Visiting HSPH student
Heather is currently an ScD candidate at the Harvard School of Public Health, in the department of Global Health and Population. Her research interests have centered on health systems, care-seeking behavior, illness management and the role of the pharmaceutical industry and health care providers. Heather is presently working in Ghana with Innovations for Poverty Action on a study related to the completion of malaria medications. She is concurrently conducting dissertation work on the role of different actors in the the public and private supply chains in implementing a new policy related to malaria medications.
Her work in India has centered on chronic diseases, especially among low-income populations, working with PUKAR, mDhil.com and the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation. Before beginning her degree at Harvard, Heather earned a Masters of Public Health from the University of Michigan, focused on health behavior, education and communication; and an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Wake Forest University.
Past and Current Visiting Scholars from Harvard Medical School
Dr. Ronak Patel, Research Consultant
Ronak Patel is a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School and is also spearheading the development of an urban health track within the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. He is collaborating with PUKAR on a study investigating the household costs of diarrheal illness in Kaula Bandar.
Dr. Hanni Stoklosa, Research Consultant
Hanni Stoklosa is a second year resident in Emergency Medicine at the Harvard Associated Emergency Medicine Residency. During medical school she served as president of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations-USA, Northeast Regional Director of AMSA (American Medical Student Association), and University Coalitions for Global Health Fellow at the Global Health Council. Hanni has extensive international experience in advocacy and research focused on eliminating disparities. She has worked in Liberia, Egypt, China, Taiwan, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines and Guatemala on gender based violence, trauma treatment infrastructure, mental health care, and HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Alison Ridpath, Research Consultant
Alison graduated from medical school in 2006 from New York University School of Medicine. She then completed my residency training in emergency medicine from the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency Program in 2010 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. She has a Masters in Public Health with a focus in international health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Currently, she is working as an attending emergency medicine physician at Winchester Hospital. She has an interest in infectious disease epidemiology.
Visiting Scholars from Other Institutions
Kunal Sood, UCSF Global Health Sciences Master Student
Kunal is a graduate student in the Global Health Sciences Program at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) who recently completed his global health field internship at PUKAR and plans to use his current expertise as a mental health professional to help marginalized populations worldwide. Prior coming to PUKAR, Kunal served as a Clinical Associate at Chennai Kaliappa Hospital in India and worked alongside the late renowned cardiologist Dr. TJ Cherian, providing behavioral change and lifestyle modification counseling to patients suffering from heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and substance abuse. During this time, he developed an integrative health and wellness program, combining comprehensive medical treatment with indigenous healing traditions. His other interests include economic and social policy as key components of holistic solutions to health issues. Kunal’s long-term professional goal is to found and lead an organization that offers low-cost interventions that is focused on mental health education, action and development.
Tharani Sivananthan, Research Consultant
Tharani Sivananthan is a clinical pharmacologist with over 10 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry. She has held positions at Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline where she led cross-functional clinical development programmes, predominantly in the field of mental health. She is Vice-Chair of the Clinical Pharmacology Sub-Committee at the Institute of Clinical Research. She has an MPhil in Public Health from the University of Cambridge and has been working for the past two years as a Specialty Registrar in public health in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. Her responsibilities in this role included assessment of the population’s health and health needs, implementation of effective strategies to address health needs and influencing the development of policy.
During her time with PUKAR, she will be involved with a project to evaluate the burden of mental health conditions in the Kaula Bandar community and to make recommendations on community-level interventions to improve mental health.
