2007 Center for Global Health Headlines

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May 17, 2007

Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health announces scholarship winners

The Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health has announced the recipients of six Global Health Master of Public Health (MPH) Scholarships: Sarah Henly-Shepard, BA, Allison Lind, BS, Lillian Aaca Okui, MD, Garima Pathak, PhD, Shomik Ray, BCom, MBA, and Tara Suntoke, PhD. The scholarships will pay full tuition for the 11-month MPH program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Master of Health Science (MHS) scholarships were also awarded to three students: Rita Czako, BS, Attia Goheer, BS, BA, and Michael Rozier, BA. The MHS scholarships will pay full tutition for the first year of the students' program at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The Scholarships were awarded through a competitive process open to all admitted applicants to the full-time MPH and MHS programs. Recipients may be either an international student or a domestic student aspiring to work in an international context.

“We are pleased to support these nine promising students in their public health work,” says Thomas Quinn, MD, the Center’s Director. “The Center works to further global health education among the Johns Hopkins community, and these students already have impressive global health experience they can draw from as they complete their studies. We look forward to witnessing all they will accomplish in their careers.”

The Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health was launched in May 2006 to facilitate and focus the extensive expertise and resources of the Johns Hopkins Institutions, together with global collaborators, to effectively address and ameliorate the world's most pressing health issues. In addition to brokering collaboration among existing global health programs in the schools of Public Health, Medicine, and Nursing, the Center also works to educate students on global health issues, both in the classroom and in the field. The Center supports students as they work shoulder-to-shoulder with faculty mentors on ground-breaking research, training to become the next generation of leaders in global health. This is the first year the Center for Global Health has offered the scholarships.

MPH candidates:

Sarah Henly-Shepard, BA
Sarah Henly-Shepard received a Bachelor of Art with honors in Latin American Studies and Public Health from the University of Texas at Austin. She also holds basic certification as an Emergency Medical Technician and as a Wilderness Search and Rescue Technician. She has studied and held internships abroad in the Dominican Republic and Brazil, gaining experience in rural and urban public health initiatives through support from an Undergraduate Research Scholarship and an Environmental Interdisciplinary FIPSE Fellowship. She has served in various capacities in cross-cultural, community health, and development initiatives in Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. Her most recent employment was as a program manager at the Migrant Clinicians Network, a national not-for-profit dedicated to improving the health of migrants and other mobile, underserved populations. Some of her recent community involvement includes serving as Lieutenant of a local Search and Rescue and disaster relief team; being a volunteer for the City of Austin Certified Emergency Response Team; training AMIGOS international health volunteers; teaching English as a second language to immigrants, refugees, and community members at the Casa Marianella shelter; and serving on a Community Impact Volunteer Life Basics Board for a local United Way chapter.

Allison Lind, BS
Allison Lind graduated in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Saint Louis University. Upon completing her degree, she volunteered for a year as a nurse in Belize City, Belize, where she helped establish the country’s first outreach center for children and families affected by HIV/AIDS. It was there in the daily struggles and triumphs of working with these families that she discovered a passion for international public health and pediatric infectious diseases. She has also spent time volunteering in a village outside of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, with a clinic and pediatric malnutrition program.  After completing her MPH degree, she hopes to further her nursing education by studying to become a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner.

Lillian Aaca Okui, MD
Lillian Aaca Okui earned her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. She also holds an Advanced Certificate of Education from Mt. St. Mary’s Namagunga, also in Uganda, and she earned a Certificate from the Summer Institutes for Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health after winning a Fogarty AIDS Scholarship to attend the program. She currently works as a medical officer for Kumi Hospital in Uganda, where she serves in the Pediatric Ward and is in charge of the Public Health Department. She completed her residency in pediatrics, obstetrics, gynecology, and surgery at Mulago Hospital, Uganda.

Garima Pathak, MBBS
Garima Pathak is a public health professional with 15 years’ experience in a variety of health challenges in urban, rural, tribal, and poor parts of India. Working for the World Health Organization with a special focus on tuberculosis control, she provided technical support to the tuberculosis program officials of three diverse state governments in India. She has had considerable field exposure to India’s public health delivery system at all levels, having worked with civil society groups as well as the governments of two states at the district health level. After completing her MPH at Hopkins, she’s looking forward to being a part of the team in India that will ensure extension of quality public health care to all of India.

Shomik Ray, BCom, MBA
Shomik Ray has been a management professional engaged in the health care development sector for the past 10 years. He has worked with international agencies, including the UK Department of International Development (DFID), Oxfam, and GTZ, at the state and national levels. His primary area of expertise is health sector support and HIV/AIDS prevention and care programs. He has a post graduate qualification in human resource management, as well as specialized training in multi-stakeholder planning tools; system development (MIS, M&E); program and project management tools; training and facilitation; knowledge management; and institutional capacity building systems. He has also obtained practitioner certification in PRINCE II methodology. He currently works as a Manager with the Resource Centre for Sexual Health and HIV/AIDS, which is a national-level resource center mandated to provide technical assistance and capacity building to strengthen the national response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India.

Tara Suntoke, PhD
Tara Suntoke received her Bachelor of Science with university honors from Carnegie Mellon University in 1997. After volunteering with the Peace Corps in an aquaculture/fisheries program in Gabon, West Africa, she joined the graduate program in biochemistry at MIT.  She studied the molecular basis of HIV-1 entry into host cells and received her PhD in 2005. For the last year and a half, she has been working as an NIH/NIAID Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) fellow and a JHMI post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Thomas Quinn’s laboratory, doing HIV research in Uganda. She is a technical advisor to the molecular lab at the Rakai Health Sciences Program and is establishing real-time PCR technology for research and diagnostic purposes. Her research projects include determining the etiology of genital ulcer disease and assessing HIV subtype distribution in a rural Ugandan population. She also serves as study coordinator for an NIH intramural research study and is involved with a program evaluation for an urban community-based HIV care organization in Kampala, Uganda.

MHS candidates:

Rita Czako, BS
Rita Czako graduated with a major in Biology and a minor in Health Promotion, Education and Behavior from the University of South Carolina. While in school, she received a variety of accolades, including the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and the Paul W. Zuccaire Internship (an 11-week research internship at the Institut Pasteur in Paris), and she earned Dean’s List all semesters. She completed a two-week long Tropical Disease Workshop in Ecuador through a study abroad program, where she gained first-hand insight into the nature of health care services in a tropical, developing country. She has also had a variety of lab experience gained through several internships she held during her undergraduate schooling.

Attia Goheer, BS, BA
Attia Goheer holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She was awarded a Genstone Program citation after completing a four-year team research project that researched ways to increase motivation for learning in low-income middle school students. She also held internships in the Child Development Lab at University of Maryland and in the Neuropsychology Lab at American University. She held several leaderships positions on her undergraduate campus and also has volunteered at several non-profit organizations including the Capital Area Food Bank and Progressive Maryland.

Michael Rozier, BA
Michael Rozier received his Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry with a minor in philosophy from Saint Louis Univeristy, where he also served as student body president. He also worked as a project assistant for the school in the summer of 2006, when he traveled to the Dominican Republic to investigate possible internships for future students, to evaluate the spiritual preparation of students in the summer medical program, and to participate in a collaboration on a water purification project. He has completed graduate course work in philosophy and theology at the University of Toronto. Rozier is an avid volunteer, having worked at community centers, hospitals, nursing homes, and schools.