Herbert B. Peterson, MD | Herbert Peterson, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor, is past chair of the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health and currently serves as professor in that department with a joint appointment in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UNC School of Medicine. He also serves as Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Research Evidence for Sexual and Reproductive Health, based in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at UNC. Certified by both the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Preventive Medicine, Dr. Peterson served for 20 years at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he was Chief of the Epidemiologic Studies Branch and the first Chief of the Women’s Health and Fertility Branch of the Division of Reproductive Health. In 1999, he was assigned by CDC to the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland where he served until coming to UNC in 2004. He retired from the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service at the rank of Captain (Navy) having received awards that include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Outstanding Service Medal, and the Surgeon General’s Exemplary Service Medal. Dr. Peterson’s major research interests are at the interface of clinical medicine and public health and are increasingly focused on global women’s reproductive health, most recently on implementation science. His work has been assuring that policies, programs, and practices-- and their implementation-- are based on the best available science. He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts, editorials, book chapters, and other publications. He is currently serving as Chair of the Lancet Commission on Evidence-Based Implementation in Global Health. He has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) and the American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society. Dr. Peterson is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American College of Preventive Medicine, and the American College of Epidemiology. In 2004, he was awarded the ACOG Distinguished Service Award and he currently serves as Chair of ACOG’s Global Expert Working Group. In 2019, he was awarded Fellowship honoris causa by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. |
Dr.Joumana Haidar | Joumana Haidar is the Deputy Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Research Evidence for Sexual and Reproductive Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). She also serves as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She received her MBA (2000) from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC and her DBA (2023) from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Haidar brings her business training, her business experience in the private sector, and her 20 years of work in public health at UNC, to the rapidly evolving field of implementation science. She co-teaches the Department of Maternal and Child Health’s advanced course in implementation science (MHCH 729 “Advanced Topics in Implementation Science for Global Health”). She also is currently serving as the lead for the Secretariat of the “Lancet Commission on Evidence-Based Implementation in Global Health”. The Lancet is one of the world’s highest impact academic journals (impact factor = 88.5, ranking first among 332 general and internal medicine journals) and the Commission’s funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her research interests in implementation science draw heavily on management and change management theories, and include the role of leadership and communication strategies in the success of change initiatives in health care settings. Her work focuses on advancing the field of implementation science by developing and applying innovative methods to support implementation, and her current interests include the potential use of AI in supporting evidence generation and analysis for implementation. Dr. Haidar previously (2021-2023) served as the implementation science lead for the study “Community Implementation of the Severe Hypertension during Pregnancy and Postpartum Safety Bundle” funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. She currently is leading the WHO Collaborating Center’s work in capacity building to strengthen the knowledge, skills, and abilities of individuals and organizations in implementation science. |
Prof Fadi El-Jardali | Dr. Fadi El-Jardali (PhD, MPH) is a recognized public health policy and systems expert and global advocate for strong systems and for the use of data, evaluation and other forms of evidence in policy and management decisions and practice. He has extensive international and regional experience and multidisciplinary background in public health, health policy and systems. His work is connected to real world health systems and priorities and grounded in the practical understanding of economic, social, environmental and political realities, constraints and context. He has published extensively on public health systems, policy, management, knowledge translation and evidence-informed policymaking with more than 150 peer-reviewed publications in addition to several book chapters and reports, and 80+ knowledge translation products on policy priority areas. This year, he is recognized as the world’s most –cited scientists in Stanford University’s 2024 indicators. His the founding Director of Knowledge to Policy (K2P) Center; Director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Evidence-informed Policy and Practice; Co-director of Center for Systematic Review on Health Policy and Systems Research (SPARK); and a founding member of the Middle East and North African (MENA) Health Policy Forum. He is co-lead and managing director of the Government Engagement Platform (GEP), the first platform in its kind in the MENA region. He is a Professor of Policy and Health Systems at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon and McMaster University in Canada. He has initiated major initiatives and programs on performance management, health policy and systems research and has helped establish knowledge translation platforms in selected countries the MENA, European, Latin America and African Regions. He has led numerous national, regional and international capacity-building initiatives on health policymaking, knowledge translation, and evidence-informed policymaking. He has a history of working closely with board members, stakeholders, private sectors, policymakers and stakeholders on several policy priorities and has used evidence to inform decisions and achieve policy impact including the program of work on quality and safety, accreditation, health integration, private sector engagement, reimbursement and case mix and links for contractual systems, etc. Over the last 20 years, he has led and supported several programmatic and policy initiatives including in Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, KSA, Kuwait, Lebanon Egypt, Jordan, etc. He supported the development and implementation of Health Services Performance Agreements (HSPA) in Qatar with support from the Ministry of Public Health. The successful HSPA was published in International Journal for Quality in Health Care (2018). Over the last several years, he has supported Public Health Authority (Weqaya) in KSA. He also worked and supported Health Holding Company (Holdco), Saudi Commission for Health Specialists as well as the Saudi Health Council. He has been a Business Consultant for private and public health entities, providers and also advisor for health insurance firms. Dr. El-Jardali has served in multiple leadership positions to bring his agenda to broader audiences, and to translate them into practical solutions. He is on the Steering Committee of WHO Evidence-Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet), was the Co-Editor in Chief of Health Research Policy and Systems.. He was also a member of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group of Experts (STAGE) and the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) research and funding Committee. He has served on other high-level committees in United Nations Organizations, Wellcome Trust, etc. Moreover, he was nominated to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2021. He is a recipient of the Global Health Leadership Award and was elected twice to the Board of Health Systems Global (HSG) Society. He is a recipient of the Fellowship on Evidence-Informed Policy from the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research. In addition to the above, Fadi has worked and held senior positions with policy analysis related organizations in Canada such as the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (as Hospital Consultant), Federal department of health / Health Canada (as Senior Policy Advisor) and the Health Council of Canada. He was also a hospital CEO. Dr. El-Jardali was nominated to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2021. He currently chairs the Founding Middle East Group for the International Government Science Systems. He has a Masters in Public Health (MPH) / Health Administration and PhD. in Public Policy (Health Policy and Systems) from Canada. |
Dr. Farhana Haque | Dr Farhana Haque is the Implementation Science Lead for the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK PHRST), an innovative partnership between the UK Health Security Agency and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine(LSHTM). She is an Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Centre for Evaluation at LSHTM and a co-module organiser for Evaluation of Public Health Interventions MSc module. Dr Haque is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH) and a Commonwealth Scholar. Previously, she was an Associate Scientist at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). She also led outbreak investigations in IEDCR, the national mandated institute for outbreak investigation and response in Bangladesh. She worked closely with US CDC, responded to numerous public health emergencies, and contributed to the Global Disease Detection Centre and FETP,B programme in Bangladesh. She also taught Public Health Medicine in Bangladesh and UCL. Dr Haque utilises interdisciplinary approaches and equitable partnership to codevelop community-based interventions to enhance epidemic preparedness in resource-constrained and humanitarian emergency settings. In addition, her research aims to determine the human health impacts of climate variability and long-term changes in the global climate and devise community-based adaptation measures to enhance the evidence-base to transform the health system in low- and middle-income countries.
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/haque.farhana |
Professor Arash Rashidian | Since 2015, he has led the WHO regional agenda on evidence-informed policy making, health information systems, digital health, research promotion and governance and knowledge sharing. His career in health policy research and health system development spans 25 years and several countries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Rashidian led the research and knowledge management pillar of the WHO response management team in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. He is Vice-Chair of WHO’s Guideline Review Committee and Executive Editor of the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean’s flagship publication. Previous positions include: Professor of Health Policy and Deputy Chancellor, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Islamic Republic of Iran; founding Director, National Institute of Health Research, Islamic Republic of Iran; Honorary Visiting Professor, Imperial College, London, UK; Honorary Professor, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Islamic Republic of Iran; Visiting Professor, School of Pharmacy, TUMS, Islamic Republic of Iran; methodological advisor, National Collaborating Centre for Acute Care (affiliated to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence), UK; Assistant Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK; Visiting Associate Professor, Aga Khan University, Pakistan and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Bangor University, UK. He has led the development of strategic policy documents, advised national health policy committees and health insurance organizations and co-authored over 200 academic papers. |