Facilitators

Dr. Asampong’s research focuses on mental health issues among adolescents, impacts of psychosocial factors on human health, family health and social support systems in both rural and urban cities in developing countries, family initiatives on psychological well-being and school achievement in urban slums and/or deprived urban communities. He has worked on a variety of mental health-focused programs and research, including a Unilever sponsored program, which addressed adolescent mental health challenges via a Ghanaian radio station.

Email: easampong@ug.edu.gh

Phyllis Dako-Gyeke, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana, Legon. Phyllis has extensive experience in teaching, research and in the provision of extension services in social and behavioral dimensions of public health. Her passion has been in specialized areas including, Implementation Research, Gender and Health, Women’s Health in Sub-Saharan Africa, Maternal and Child Health, Qualitative Research Methods, HIV and AIDS, Social Epidemiology, and Health promotion. Phyllis has a PhD in Communication Studies with a specialization in Health Communication. With this background Phyllis has published widely in international peer reviewed journals covering topical areas relevant to public health in low-to-middle income contexts. She is currently the Principal Investigator for the Regional Training Centre in the Afro region supported by WHO-TDR, and the lead for Implementation Research capacity strengthening across Africa. Phyllis has led the design and conduct of several implementation research projects.

Email: pdako-gyeke@ug.edu.gh

Dr. Hansoti is an Associate Professor in Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). She completed her MBChB at Edinburgh University (2006) and an EM residency at the University of Chicago (2012), an MPH from JHU (2013), and a Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town (2016). She has over 75 publications, several research awards and is an active member of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Institutional Review Board (IRB). Her research focuses on the intersection of Global Health, HIV, and Implementation Science. Specifically, she seeks to evaluate the implementation of evidence-based interventions for service delivery in complex clinical environments such as the ED. Most of her research to date has been based in South Africa. Her domestic research focuses on the implementation of ED-based surveillance activities for COVID-19 and other influenza-like illnesses. 

Email: bhansot1@jh.edu

Cheryl Moyer is an Associate Professor of Learning Health Sciences and an Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Her research focuses on the social and cultural factors that influence maternal and neonatal health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa, including an emphasis on facility based delivery, neonatal mortality, social autopsy, and the assessment of ‘near-miss mortality’ – or those mothers and babies who suffer a life-threatening complication but ultimately survive. Most recently, she was the lead investigator on a 3-year USAID-funded project in northern Ghana that involved the conduct of social autopsies to explore maternal and neonatal deaths, sociocultural audits to explore the determinants of maternal and neonatal near-misses, and used GIS technology to map the location of deaths and near-misses against clinical, demographic, social, and cultural determinants. She also serves as a co-Investigator on an NIH-funded global health training grant for U.S. and Ghanaian post-doctoral fellow

Email: camoyer@umich.edu

Dr. Nwameme is a faculty member at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana, Legon. She holds an MBBS degree, as well as Masters and PhD degrees in Public Health. Strong considerations in her choice of research areas include community education, innovative changes to existing practices, and the human right to health regardless of socio-economic status or gender. She has had the opportunity to explore these interests through research and pedagogical work done in Maternal Health, Urban and Community Health, Implementation Research, as well as Gender and Health. Currently, she is involved in research in various implementation research projects as well as the development, running and scale-up of courses under the WHO/TDR assisted African Regional Training Centre at UGSPH, Legon.

Email: aunwameme@ug.edu.gh

Grace Umutesi is pursuing her PhD in Global Health in the Implementation Science track. Her dissertation work focuses on the natural history of HPV infection among African women, the acceptability a single-dose HPV vaccination strategy among healthcare providers and the budget impact of different HPV vaccination strategies in Kenya. She is also a Research Fellow at Gates Ventures where she leads a project on Innovations and Exemplars in Diagnostics service delivery in low-and-middle income countries. Her main area of interest includes the design and implementation of innovative programs that lead to an efficient use of resources and improved health outcomes especially in resource constrained settings. She is passionate about developing local capacities, fostering strong cross-sectoral collaborations, and using unconventional approaches to solve most pressing global health issues.

Email: gumutesi@uw.edu

Dr. Anjuli Wagner is faculty in the Global WACh Center in the Department of Global Health who has been working in Kenya for 13 years. Her interests within global health include pediatric HIV, implementation science, and operations research and she specializes in systems analysis and quality improvement. Anjuli has been involved in a series of studies that range from incentive trials to pediatric HIV diagnostic testing to adolescent HIV to PrEP in pregnancy. She is passionate about working in collaboration with ministries of health to identify health system research priorities and address relevant questions with implementation science.

Dr. Wagner is currently the PI of a K01 and R01 focused on testing implementation strategies to improve delivery of PrEP for pregnant and postpartum women in Kenya, an R21 focused on using modeling for point-of-care diagnostic machine placement decision-making, and a CFAR pilot award focused on engaging diverse adolescents in research using respondent-driven sampling and virtual focus groups. She is a co-investigator on projects focusing on optimizing the pediatric HIV cascade using systems engineering tools in Kenya; causes of mortality for adolescents living with HIV in Kenya; and integrating point-of-care viral load testing in both Kenya and the US.

Email: anjuliw@uw.edu