Aga Khan University, Department of Community Health Sciences

Gregory Pappas MD PHD was chairman of the Department of Community Health Sciences (CHS) at the Aga Khan University in Karachi Pakistan 2006 to 2009. During that time the Departments went through a dramatic development starting with strategic planning followed by re-organization. A PhD program was created and steps were taken towards international accreditation. Important new programs were added including the first study of environment and health in Pakistan and a major program to address the mental health needs of Afghanistan.

Dr. Pappas led the final report of a major project of CHS, Tawana Pakistan. (the link includes a video describing the project and a copy of the full report). This was a mega-pilot for a school feeding program that effected the lives of over 400,000 primary school girls in 19 of the poorest Districts in the country. The program cut serious malnutrition in half and doubled school enrollement. Peer review jounnal articles have also documented the success of the mega-pilot, "Tawana project-school nutrition program in Pakistan - its success, bottlenecks, and lessons learnd by Budrudin, Agha, Peermohamed, Rafique, Khan and Pappas in Asia Pac J Clin Nutr 2008;17 (S1):357-360,. A second article by Pappas G, Agha A, Rafique G, Khan KS, Badruddin SH, Peermohamed H. in "Community-based approaches to combating malnutrition and poor education among girls in resource-poor settings: report of a large scale intervention in Pakistan" can be found in Rural and Remote Health 8 (online), 2008: 820. Available from: http://www.rrh.org.au

Dr. Pappas promoted studies and response to HIV/AIDS in Karachi during his tenure. He re-establisheed the Karachi City HIV/AIDS Work Group and initiated a series of studies on HIV in Rehri Got. Those studies are now coming to fruition in peer reviewed articles.

CHS became an important part of the AKU effort to establish a medical school in East Africa. Dr. Pappas deputed a faculty member to Nairobi to promote community health sciences as part of the medical school being founded there.

Link here for video of some work conducted at AKU CHS.