John E. Lange, J.D., M.S. (Co-Chair) is a former United States ambassador and Senior Fellow for Global Health Diplomacy at the United Nations (UN) Foundation. Ambassador Lange serves as the primary focal point for the UN Foundation’s global health diplomacy activities. Prior to joining the Foundation in July 2013, Ambassador Lange spent 4 years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation working with African governments to improve public health. He has served as co-chair of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s Polio Partners Group since its launch in April 2012.
Ambassador Lange had a 28-year career in the Foreign Service at the U.S. Department of State, including service as Special Representative on Avian and Pandemic Influenza; Deputy Inspector General; Deputy U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at the inception of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; and Associate Dean at the Foreign Service Institute. He was Ambassador to Botswana from 1999 to 2002 and simultaneously served as Special Representative to the Southern African Development Community. Lange headed the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam as Charge d’Affaires during the August 7, 1998, terrorist bombing, for which he received the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award for skilled leadership and extraordinary courage.
From 1991 to 1995 at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Lange managed humanitarian and refugee assistance channeled through international organizations. He also had tours of duty in the State Department Bureaus of African Affairs, Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Management in Washington and at U.S. Embassies in Togo, France, and Mexico. Prior to joining the diplomatic service in 1981, he worked for 5 years at the UN Association of the USA in New York.
Ambassador Lange authored a first-person account of pandemic influenza negotiations for a book of case studies in global health diplomacy. He is a member of the University of Wisconsin International
Studies Advisory Board; the Advisory Board of the Global Health Diplomacy Network; the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs; the American Society of International Law; the American Foreign Service Association; and the Advisory Council of the Foreign Service Youth Foundation.
He has degrees from the National War College (M.S. in national security strategy), the University of Wisconsin Law School (J.D.), and the University of Wisconsin–Madison (B.A. in political science). He was admitted to the bar in Wisconsin and New York and has studied at The Hague Academy of International Law. He speaks English and Spanish and has limited proficiency in French.
E. Anne Peterson, M.D., M.P.H. (Co-Chair) is program director for the Public Health of the Ponce School of Medicine and Health Sciences and a research professor at George Washington University. She earned her M.D. degree for the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, and her M.P.H. and Preventive Medicine residency from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a board certified in General Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Peterson has an extensive background in both U.S. and International Public Health and medical practice, and has become a decisive voice in global policy agendas. She is a research professor at George Washington University.
From 2000 to 2005, Dr. Peterson was Assistant Administrator for the Bureau for Global Health in the U.S. Agency for International Development. She helped guide U.S. government’s international health policies, including PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), served as U.S. representative on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Dr. Peterson served for 3 years as the Health Commissioner for the State of Virginia. She has served as a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization in Haiti and Brazil. She lived for almost 6 years in sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya and Zimbabwe). She has also been involved in U.S.-based research in chronic disease prevention.
Rifat Atun, M.B.B.S., M.B.A., FRCP, is a professor of global health systems at Harvard School of Public Health and the director of the Global Health Systems Cluster. He is an honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and in 2006-2013, he was a professor of International Health Management at Imperial College London. Between 2008 and 2012 he was a member of the Executive Management Team of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria in Switzerland as the Director of the Strategy, Performance and Evaluation Cluster.
His research is empirically oriented and focuses on health systems reform, diffusion of innovations in health systems and global health financing, including research and development. He has published extensively in these areas in Lancet, PLOS Medicine, BMJ, Lancet Infectious Disease, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
Dr. Atun has worked at the UK Department for International Development Health Systems Resource Centre and has acted as a consultant for the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and a number of international agencies on the design, implementation and evaluation of health system reforms.
Professor Atun has served as a member of the Advisory Committee for the WHO Research Centre for Health Development in Japan. He is a member of the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board, the UK Medical Research Council’s Global Health Group and a member of Advisory Board for the Norwegian Research Council’s Programme for Global Health and Vaccination Research. He serves as a member of the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine Standing Committee on Health Systems.
Dr. Atun studied medicine at University of London as a Commonwealth Scholar and subsequently completed his postgraduate medical studies and Masters in business administration at University of London and Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners (UK), and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK).
Georges Benjamin, M.D., is well-known in the world of public health as a leader, practitioner and administrator. Dr. Benjamin has been the executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA), the nation’s oldest and largest organization of public health professionals, since December 2002. He came to this position from his position as Health Secretary for the State of Maryland. Dr. Benjamin became secretary of health in Maryland in April 1999, following 4 years as its deputy secretary for public health services. As secretary, Dr. Benjamin oversaw the expansion and improvement in the state’s Medicaid program and served on many committees to improve Maryland health services, including the Task Force on Quality of Care in Nursing Facilities.
Dr. Benjamin is a graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He is board-certified in
internal medicine and a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, a fellow emeritus of the American College of Emergency Physicians and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health.
An established administrator, author, and orator, Benjamin started his post graduate medical career in the U.S. Army Medical Corps at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, WA., where he managed a large ambulatory care service as chief of the Acute Illness Clinic and a attending physician within the Department of Emergency Medicine. Later, he was assigned to Walter Reed Army Medical Center where he served as chief of emergency medicine. After leaving the Army, he chaired the Department of Community Health and Ambulatory Care at the District of Columbia General Hospital. He was promoted to acting commissioner for public health for the District of Columbia and later directed one of the busiest ambulance services in the nation as interim director of the Emergency Ambulance Bureau of the District of Columbia Fire Department.
At APHA, Dr. Benjamin also serves as publisher of the nonprofit’s monthly publication, The Nation’s Health, the association’s official newspaper, and the American Journal of Public Health, the profession’s premier scientific publication. He is the author of more than 100 scientific articles and book chapters. His recent book The Quest for Health Reform: A Satirical History is an exposé of the nearly 100-year quest to ensure quality affordable health coverage for all through the use of political cartoons.
Dr. Benjamin also serves on the boards of Research!America, Partnership for Prevention, the Reagan-Udall Foundation and is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. In 2008, he was named one of the top 25 minority executives in health care by Modern Healthcare Magazine, in addition to being voted among the 100 most influential people in health care from 2007-2013 and one of the nation’s most influential physician executives from 2009-2013.
Tina Brock, Ed.D., M.S., joined the Department of Clinical Pharmacy in July 2010 and serves as the Associate Dean for Global Health and Educational Innovations for the School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco. She was previously the Director of Capacity Building at Management Sciences for Health, a Senior Lecturer at the University of London, and a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received the B.A. German, B.S. Pharmacy and M.S. Pharmaceutical Sciences from the
University of Mississippi, and the Doctorate of Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Brock’s primary research interests are global health, interprofessional education, capacity building, human resources for health, technology-enhanced learning, curriculum development, medication access, rational medicines use, and pharmacovigilance systems.
She has done work in Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Liberia, and Vietnam. She currently has active projects with Kabul University in Afghanistan and the University of Namibia.
Margaret E. Kruk, M.P.H., M.D., is an assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Dr. Kruk focuses her research on health system effectiveness and population preferences for healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Kruk is particularly interested in the application of new methods, such as discrete choice experiments and systems dynamic modeling, in studying the interactions between health systems and populations in low-income countries. She works with governments and academic colleagues in several African countries, including Tanzania, Ethiopia, Liberia, and Ghana. She has published on women’s preferences for maternal health care, policy options for human resource shortages, health care financing, and evaluation of large-scale health programs in low-income countries. Prior to coming to Columbia, Dr. Kruk was an assistant professor in health management and policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and policy advisor for Health at the Millennium Project, an advisory body to the UN Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals. She has also practiced family and emergency medicine in northern Ontario, Canada.
Charles MacCormack, Ph.D., is Executive-in-Residence at Middlebury College. From 1993-2011, Dr. MacCormack was president of Save the Children. Dr. MacCormack is on the Board of Directors of the International Save the Children Alliance, which implements programs totaling $1 billion for children in 120 countries.
Dr. MacCormack served as Board Chair of InterAction from 2006 to 2009. He also serves as Co-Chair of both the Basic Education Coalition and the Campaign for Effective Global Leadership, and is a founding board member of Malaria No More. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. MacCormack sat on the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid and the Food Security Advisory Committee and was
president of the Non-Governmental Committee on UNICEF. He was selected by the United Nations Secretary General to participate on the Founding Committee of the United Nations University and served as a member of the United States Delegation to the 1997 World Food Summit and the United States Delegation for the 2002 General Assembly Special Session on Children. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Education by Middlebury College, and an honorary Doctor of Law by Clark University. He was made a member of the Grand Cordon of the Order of Al-Istiolal by former King Hussein of Jordan.
Prior to his position at Save the Children, Dr. MacCormack was President of World Learning (formerly known as the Experiment in International Living) from 1977 to 1992. His first experience at Save the Children was as Vice President of Programs in the 1970s and for 4 years he worked as the Director of the Masters Degree Program in International Management at the School for International Training. Before that, he was a research fellow in foreign policy studies at The Brookings Institution. He earlier served as Assistant to the Dean of the International Fellows Program at Columbia University. Dr. MacCormack was an instructor of Latin American Politics at the University of New Hampshire Summer School and was a staff associate for the First National City Bank International Division in Caracas, Venezuela.
Dr. MacCormack received his doctorate and master’s degrees from Columbia University and his undergraduate degree from Middlebury College. He was a National Science Foundation Fellow at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City and a Fulbright Fellow at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas. He participated in a special three-summer program at the Harvard Business School on the Leadership of Global Non-Profit Organizations.
Nachiket Mor, M.B.A., Ph.D., is the chairman of the board of CARE India, a board member of the Reserve Bank of India, and a board member of CRISIL. He has a background in finance and economics with a specific interest in financial access and health care. Dr. Mor worked with ICICI, India’s second largest bank, from 1987 to 2007 and was a member of its Board of Directors from 2001 to 2007. From 2007 to 2011, he served as the founding president of the ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth and during this period was also the chair of the Governing Council of IFMR Trust and board chair of FINO, both leading participants in the field of financial inclusion in India. While at ICICI he also served as a board member of Wipro for 5 years and board chair of the Fixed Income Money Market and Derivatives Association of India for 2 years. During 2011-2012 he served as a member of the High Level
Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage for India appointed by the Planning Commission of India, and during 2012-2013 as a member of the health sub-committee of the National Advisory Council of the Government of India. Dr. Mor is currently also a member of the Board of Directors of the IKP Centre for Technologies in Public Health and Sughavazhvu Healthcare. Dr. Mor is a Yale World Fellow, has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania with a specialization in finance from the Wharton School, an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad, and an undergraduate degree in Physics from the Mumbai University.
David Ross, Sc.D., is Director of the Public Health Informatics Institute. He became the Director of All Kids Count, a program of the Institute supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), in 2000, and subsequently began the Institute, also with funding from RWJF. His experience spans the private healthcare and public health sectors. Before joining the Task Force for Global Health, Dr. Ross was an executive with a private health information systems firm, a Public Health Service officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and an executive in a private health system.
Dr. Ross holds a doctoral degree in Operations Research from the Johns Hopkins University (1980) where he was involved in health services research. After serving as Director of the Health Service Research Center, Baltimore USPHS Hospital, he became Vice President for Administration with the Wyman Park Health System. In 1983, he joined the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. During his career at CDC, he worked in environmental health, CDC’s executive administration, and public health practice. Dr. Ross was founding director of the Information Network for Public Health Officials, CDC’s national initiative to improve the information infrastructure of public health. His research and programmatic interests reflect those of the Institute: the strategic application of information technologies to improve public health practice.
Susan Scrimshaw, Ph.D., is currently the President of The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York. Prior to her appointment as President of The Sage Colleges, Dr. Scrimshaw was President of Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. She was dean of the School of Public Health, and professor of community health sciences and of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) from 1994 through June 2006. Prior to becoming dean at UIC in 1994, she was associate dean of public
health and professor of public health and anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr. Scrimshaw is a graduate of Barnard College and obtained her M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. Her research includes community participatory research methods, addressing health disparities, improving pregnancy outcomes, violence prevention, health literacy, and culturally appropriate delivery of health care. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies, where she has been elected a member of the governing council and serves on The Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP), a joint unit of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association, and the Institute of Medicine of Chicago.
While in Chicago, Dr. Scrimshaw was an appointed member of the Chicago Board of Health and Illinois State Board of Health. She chaired the IOM Committee on Communication for Behavior Change in the 21st Century: Improving the Health of Diverse Populations, and served as a member of the IOM Committee on Health Literacy. She is a past president of the board of directors of the U.S.-Mexico Foundation for Science, former chair of the Association of Schools of Public Health, and past president of the Society for Medical Anthropology. Her honors and awards include the Margaret Mead Award, a Hero of Public Health gold medal awarded by President Vicente Fox of Mexico, the UIC Mentor of the Year Award in 2002, and the Chicago Community Clinic Visionary Award in 2005.
Dr. Scrimshaw was raised in Guatemala until age 16. She is fluent in Spanish, and also speaks French and Portuguese.
Nana A. Y. Twum-Danso, M.D., M.P.H., FACPM, is a public health and preventive medicine physician with 14 years of experience in global health policy, strategy development, program design, project management, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. She has technical expertise in quality improvement; change management; health systems strengthening; community-based health care delivery; maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH); parasitic disease control; and pharmacovigilance.
Currently, Dr. Twum-Danso is a Senior Program Officer in the MNCH Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where she develops and manages grants across the continuum of care from home to hospital to improve MNCH outcomes at scale in several African countries and provides technical assistance to colleagues on quality
improvement and behavior change strategies. Prior to that, she was the Executive Director for African Operations at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after 3.5 years as the Director of Project Fives Alive! in Ghana, a nationwide quality improvement initiative to accelerate the achievement of Millennium Development Goals Four and Five which was a partnership amongst IHI, the Ghana Health Service and the National Catholic Health Service of Ghana. Before IHI, Dr. Twum-Danso held several leadership positions at the Task Force for Global Health in Atlanta, Georgia, during which time she worked collaboratively with the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Program, pharmaceutical companies, and various international nongovernmental organizations to reduce the public health burden of onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis and soil-transmitted helminth infections in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Dr. Twum-Danso was an adjunct faculty member with the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta from 2001 to 2008. She is currently playing a similar role in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Dr. Twum-Danso has a bachelor’s degree in biochemical sciences and a medical degree, both from Harvard University. She received specialty training in preventive medicine and public health from Emory University, which included a master of public health degree in health policy and management. Dr. Twum-Danso has been a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine since 2006 and a member of the International Society for Quality in Health Care since 2010.
