Global Health Topics: Medical Education, Quality Improvement

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Dr. Adam is a co-founder of Africa Consortium for Quality Improvement Research in Frontline Healthcare (ACQUIRE). She trained as a pediatrician and has been working in medical education and public health based at AIC Kijabe Hospital, Kenya, since 2011, where she is Head of Research and the Director of the Kijabe Maternal Newborn Community Health Project. 

Teris works primarily with Dr. Shannon Byers, supporting various projects within the Vanderbilt Institute of Global Health. Teris obtained her Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in Health Policy from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and her Master’s in Health Science from Meharry Medical College. Teris is passionate about equity in women’s healthcare and mitigating social determinants of health in low-income communities.

Topics: Epidemiology, HIV/AIDS, Implementation Science, Infectious Diseases, Mobile Health, Tuberculosis (TB)

Countries: Gambia, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania

Topics: Cancer, Education and Training (Capacity Building), Medical Education, Neglected Tropical Diseases, Surgery, Trauma and Injury

Countries: Kenya

Dr. Davis has practiced and taught surgery in Kenya full-time since 2007 at AIC Kijabe Hospital. He helped start the General Surgery residency in 2008. His interests include trauma and acute care surgery, oncologic surgery, head and neck surgery, facial fracture care, and surgical education. 

Topics: Biological Sciences, Clinical Trials, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Vaccinology

Country: South Africa

Topics: Health Policy, HIV and Aging 

Country: Brazil

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Dr. Castilho is an assistant professor and physician-scientist in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Castilho received her MD and MPH from Johns Hopkins University. She completed her residency in internal medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt. She joined the faculty in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt in 2015 and shortly after received a K23 Career Development award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study aging in adults with HIV. Her research on long-term outcomes of adults living with HIV utilizes observational cohorts of adults with HIV including locally in Nashville, nationally with the North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design (NA-ACCORD), and internationally with the Caribbean, Central, and South America network for HIV epidemiology (CCASAnet). She is a PI of an R01 from the National Institute on Aging with a research focus on the non-infectious and long-term outcomes of adults living with HIV in Brazil. She has additional research expertise in infectious diseases and women's health and is the project PI for the HPV Impact study of the TN Emerging Infections Program. Dr. Castilho also sees patients with HIV at the Vanderbilt Comprehensive Care Clinic.

Countries: Latvia, South Africa, Uganda

I am a clinician scientist with a special interest in the epidemiology of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Africa. I am a founding member of the African Research on Kidney Disease (ARK) Consortium which includes centres of research excellence in Malawi, South Africa, and Uganda, with strong ties to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK. I trained as an MD, specialised as a physician, followed by a subspecialty in nephrology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. My doctoral work was anchored in the rural SA/MRC Wits Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance site, Mpumalanga province, where we determined the population prevalence and associated risk factors for CKD. We also evaluated performance of creatinine and cystatin C based eGFR equations using plasma excretion of iohexol as the reference GFR - the largest study of its kind from Africa. We showed that creatinine is a poor biomarker for eGFR, and that we are underestimating the prevalence of CKD in African populations. Our findings have profound implications for individual care and population health in Africa. As the ARK Consortium, we are collaborating with colleagues at VIGH to better understand genetic risk associated with CKD incidence and progression in African populations, and facilitate comparison with different population groups in the USA.

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