October 01, 2024“I have a passion for trying to write or communicate around things that make a change.” For more than three decades, Uttara Bharath Kumar, Senior Program Officer II and Team Lead for India for the Center for Communications Programs (CCP) in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, has been on a mission to merge her love of writing and creativity with her desire to help make people healthier. Learn more about her story in this faculty spotlight.
September 02, 2024“I’ve been informally talking to a lot of tuberculosis survivors from around the world to get a sense of what their needs are post-TB completion because I do think that’s a very forgotten aspect of TB,” Dr. Golub said. “It’s getting a lot of attention in the last several years from the perspective of post-TB lung disease, which is kind of what our TB PuRe study, and to some extent TB Aftermath, are about. We want to improve the health of people with TB so they can live productive, healthy lives following their battle with TB.”
August 01, 2024Dr. Anju Malhotra has worked most of her life improving the health, well-being, and empowerment of women and girls around the world. Born in Punjab, India, her career is a commitment to improving gender equality in India and beyond.
July 01, 2024“One of the best things about ophthalmology is the life-changing surgeries. Cataract surgery confers major benefits to patients, can be performed in 15 minutes, and is one of the most cost-effective procedures in modern medicine,” Dr. Shekhawat said. “What that means is that these procedures can be done at scale. The problems are widespread, affecting millions of people globally, but the solutions can also be scalable and improve the lives of those millions of people. That lends itself very well to public health interventions where, if you rigorously maintain safety and quality of care, you can radically improve lives on a massive scale. The sheer quantity of good you can do for people as an ophthalmologist really appeals to me.”
June 04, 2024“I wanted to focus on the diseases that dramatically impacted lives and carried unnecessary morbidity.” Dr. Jeffrey Tornheim, Assistant Professor of Medicine on the infectious disease faculty, has been interested in the field since he was an undergraduate student. He collected signatures for petitions to generate support for PEPFAR and the World Health Organization’s Three by Five Initiative and helped found the Student Global AIDS Campaign chapter at Brandeis University, advocating for improved access to then-novel therapies as the HIV epidemic.
May 07, 2024“This has been a very positive few years in the US-India relationship, and it’s a relationship that’s likely to continue being important to both governments. There’s a lot of demand and interest, so I’m excited to keep working.”
February 12, 2024“One thing that has struck me traveling and working in India is the public recognition of the importance and value of infrastructure for natural resources.” Benjamin Zaitchik, a professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University, focuses mostly on regional climate in his research, trying to understand the atmosphere, the climate system, and what factors drive and extreme weather events.
January 18, 2024Dr. Sara Bennett, a seasoned health policy and systems researcher, has been involved with India’s healthcare sector since her early career. Her expertise lies in dissecting health systems’ structures, focusing on financing and governance, in an effort to comprehend policy formation.
November 13, 2023“COVID-19 highlighted the need for multidisciplinary and interprofessional approaches to public health.” Dr. Brian Wahl, Associate Research Professor, International Health, sees capacity strengthening as one of the most important elements for developing positive downstream effects in healthcare in India. In Uttar Pradesh, where most of his work is done, many people who are responsible for creating public health programs and executing public health functions have had limited formal training in public
July 13, 2024Dr. Anna Durbin, a professor jointly appointed in International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and in Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has been a part of Johns Hopkins since 1999, studying viral diseases and the early development of vaccines. Most of her research has focused on dengue, a mosquito born illness that is endemic in India. “We’re going to see an increase in dengue cases because wherever you have a lot of people and mosquitoes in the same place, and you have a warm enough climate, you have the right environment for dengue transmission. That's what we're seeing in India.”
May 15, 2023Dr. Kunal Parikh, a research faculty member in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine sees a future where technology is a great equalizer in medicine. The surface has barely been scratched. “My mission is to create a world where no person is limited by the circumstances of their birth.”
April 15, 2023“I'm passionate about the work that I do, and I speak up about maternal nutrition to push the agenda forward. Everything being done right now is limited and we need to double down.”
March 24, 2023“There are literally billions of people in the world who are infected with TB already and are at risk of getting sick with it in the future. It’s a problem that will stick around for a long time to come, even if we developed the most perfect tools imaginable.”
February 13, 2023“I wanted to give back, but I felt there was a dearth of epidemiology and genetic data studies in India.” Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Nilanjan Chatterjee points to his childhood in India, attending public schools, as a driving force behind his work in applying mathematical statistics and probability theory to public health, cancer, epidemiology, and genetics.
January 13, 2023“My career in India has pivoted multiple times because of need and opportunity.” Read more to learn about Dr. Bollinger's past and current work spanning decades in India.
September 15, 2022“It’s not about the publications or anything else, it’s about making a difference in the lives of people walking through your doors.”
