Trent Hall, home of DGHI
Published October 20, 2015
Seven new faculty members have joined the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI) this fall, including four who are transitioning from staff, adjunct faculty or fellow positions at DGHI and three who are new to Duke. Their expertise includes maternal and child health, health economics, infectious and chronic diseases and global health policy.
Settling into a New Position at Duke/DGHI
Eric Green, Assistant Professor of the Practice, Global Health
Field: Maternal and child health
Eric Green’s primary research interest is how technology can improve health and health systems in low-income settings. He is currently collaborating with colleagues on studies in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Liberia, and Rwanda. His research portfolio spans from formative work on human centered design to impact evaluations of individual and group interventions. Green holds a PhD in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina.
Jeffrey Moe, Professor of the Practice, Global Health
Field: Health economics
Prior to his current role at DGHI, Jeff Moe, PhD, was an Executive in Residence at Duke's Fuqua School of Business and, since 2012, an adjunct faculty member at DGHI.
Moe’s research interests include incentives for neglected diseases, health care delivery innovation and health care financing and payment reforms in low- and middle-income health care markets. He also collaborates with ethicists, public agencies and private firms regarding the ethical challenges when patients demand expanded access to new therapeutics and public private partnerships are created to accelerate the discovery of innovative therapeutics.
Lawrence Park, Associate Professor, Medicine and Global Health
Field: Infectious diseases
Larry Park, PhD, joined the Duke Global Health Institute in 2013 as adjunct faculty and the DGHI Research Design and Analysis Core (formerly the DGHI Biostatistics Core) in July 2014. Park holds a PhD in epidemiology from UNC Chapel Hill and master’s degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from the Johns Hopkins School of Engineering. He has spent many years working in basic science (protein chemistry, molecular biology, immunology and viral evolution).
His research interests and collaborations include respiratory infectious disease, HIV and HCV infection and their effects on chronic disease, cardiovascular disease and endocarditis, healthcare cost and utilization, hospital infection control and prevention, the application of advanced statistical methods in epidemiology, analysis of longitudinal data, survival analysis and methods for causal inference in observational epidemiology.
Gayani Tillekeratne, Assistant Research Professor, Global Health, and Medical Instructor, Division of Infectious Diseases
Field: Infectious diseases
Prior to joining the DGHI faculty, Gayani Tillekeratne, MD, MSc, completed the Global Health Residency/Fellowship Pathway through DGHI’s Hubert Yeargan Center for Global Health, a Fogarty International Clinical Research Fellowship, and a Master of Science in Global Health at Duke.
Tillekeratne’s work centers on identifying causes of acute febrile respiratory tract infections and using rapid diagnostics to improve antibiotic stewardship and decrease antimicrobial resistance in Sri Lanka. She received her medical degree from Duke University and completed her Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases training at the University of Pennsylvania.
Calling Duke Home for the First Time
Abu Abdullah, Research Professor of Global Health
Field: Chronic diseases
Abu Abdullah, MD, MPH, PhD, FFPH is a research professor of global health at Duke Kunshan University. He is a public health physician and behavioral scientist with expertise in epidemiological, behavioral and health services research. He is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health (FFPH) at the UK Royal College of Physicians, a Fellow of the Hong Kong College of Community Medicine (FHKCCM) and a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy Medicine (FHKAM).
Abdullah’s research interests include prevention and control of chronic non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries by addressing major risk factors such as tobacco use, poor diet and physical inactivity, and by improving adherence to treatment; health services research among the underserved in the United States and in developing countries; and global health and development. His research also focuses on the use of information and communication technology to promote global health research and training.
Matthew Rubach, Assistant Professor, Medicine and Global Health
Field: Infectious diseases
Matthew Rubach, MD, is board-certified in internal medicine, pediatrics, and adult infectious disease, and has also completed a clinical pathology fellowship in medical microbiology. During his infectious disease fellowship, he was a Fogarty International Center Global Health Fellow based at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre-Duke partnership, where he studied the epidemiology of bacterial zoonoses in northern Tanzania under the mentorship of DGHI adjunct faculty member, John Crump.
Rubach's main research interest is elucidating etiologies of severe infections with a focus on improving laboratory capacity and validating novel diagnostic assays in resource-limited settings. He hopes that this research will inform clinical management algorithms and disease prevention priorities.
Gavin Yamey, Professor of the Practice, Global Health
Field: Global health policy
Gavin Yamey, MD, MPH, trained in clinical medicine at Oxford University and University College London, medical journalism and editing at the BMJ and public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was deputy editor of the Western Journal of Medicine, assistant editor at the BMJ, a founding senior editor of PLOS Medicine, and the principal investigator on a $1.1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the launch of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
Yamey serves on two international health commissions, the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health and the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery. He has been an external advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) and to the Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR).
Before joining Duke, Yamey led the Evidence-to-Policy Initiative in the Global Health Group at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and was an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatics at the UCSF School of Medicine.
