During the lunch hour of the conference attendees are invited to sign-up to sit with a Lunch Discussion Leader.  These roundtable-style lunches provide the opportunity for one-on-one dialogues with global health leaders here at the University of Utah.  Share experiences, receive personal advice and learn how you can incorporate global health part of your world.  Sign-up will be available upon registration. 

Brian Good, MD currently spends roughly 2/3rds of the year in the Division of Pediatric In-patient medicine and 1/3rd of the year volunteering with Concern America, a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles. As a medical volunteer, Brian currently spends 4 months a year in rural Colombia or Guatemala teaching medicine to layperson health promoters. The ultimate goal is to improve the health in communities geographically distant from the current health system in their own countries. Brian’s personal goal is to merge his careers and bring residents or medical students with him to experience alternative forms of feasible health care.

C. Albert Noyes, PharmD has been a clinical pharmacist for the Utah Navajo Health System (UNHS) for the past 3 years and is currently serving as secretary for the organization.  He has established various collaborative practice agreements that allow for better delivery of healthcare to the Navajo nation; however, there is still much to be done.   

Caren Frost, PhD, MPH is a research professor at the University o Utah’s college of social work.  Her Ph.D. is in Medical, Cultural, and Applied Anthropology.  She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco in the 1980s.  She chairs the Global and Health Concentrations for the Masters of Social Work Program for the U of Utah’s College of Social Work, and teaches courses on evidence-based research, administration and supervision, national and global issues in women’s health, and human rights and gender issues in the Middle East & North Africa.  She has developed learning abroad courses with partners in Mongolia and Ghana, and is working on an international study option dealing with social work interventions with the Zahra Charity and the Grand Atlas Foundation in Morocco.

Carol Harris, MD is a Professor of Clinical Medicine within the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Einstein Institute of Global HIV Medicine.  The institute’s foci are (1) to teach AIDS medicine, (2) to understand and describe cultural, economic, and political barriers impeding the implementation of AIDS programs, (3) to act as a force for change enhancing HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment by the development of model programs.  She oversees student projects in Ethiopia involving orphan and vulnerable children care and support, rehabilitation of marginalized women, rural and urban development, and malaria prevention and control efforts.

Catherine deVries, MD, MS joined the Pediatric Urology group at the University of Utah and Primary Children's Medical Center in 2000 and is a Clinical Professor of Surgery and Public Health at the University of Utah School of Medicine. While pediatric urology is her clinical focus within the U.S, she has been intensively active in the development of sustainable global surgery since 1992. In 1994, she founded International Volunteers in Urology (now IVUmed) and continues as its President. IVUmed is dedicated to urological education worldwide and focuses on training doctors and nurses in developing countries. Dr. deVries has developed urological training programs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Faiz Rehmani, MD is a current resident in Neurology at the University of Utah.  He was born and raised in East Africa, completed medical school in Pakistan, and has previous internal medicine residency training at Moi University in Eldoret Kenya.  His interests include HIV and tropical neurology as well as stroke. His dream is to help start a Neurology Residency Program and a dedicated Stroke Centre in Kenya.

Gary Lowder, DDS is a professor at the University of Utah School of Dentistry and participates in an ongoing collaboration with the dental school in Kumasi, Ghana. He has been instrumental in the completion of the dental curriculum where he also guest-lectures subjects of occlusion, temporomandibular disorders, operative/restorative techniques, periodontology, and pediatric dentistry.

Jeff Robison, MD is an attending physician in the Emergency Department at Primary Children’s Medical Center. In addition to clinical work, Dr. Robison is integrally involved with the School of Medicine's International Medicine Program. He will be teaching a course in international medicine, as well as organizing medical rotations in Ghana. His research interests include developing emergency triage systems in developing countries in order to decrease hospital mortality. Dr. Robison completed residency training in pediatrics at Columbia University. After residency, Dr. Robison spent two years in Malawi as a physician working with an international AIDS program through Baylor College of Medicine. He has since completed fellowship training in pediatric emergency medicine through our department.

Josephine Abrahams, MD, MPH is a nephrologist at the University of Utah and assistant program director for the Nephrology Fellowship Program at the university.  She studied and trained at the University of Madras, India, before briefly studying pediatrics in the United Kingdom.  She completed her MPH, residency and fellowship at the University of Utah.  She is eager to discuss global health in India as well as pediatric diseases of developing countries.

Lisa Davis, CNM, MS recently worked with Doctors Without Borders in refugee camps in Bangladesh for 6 months. Her other international humanitarian experiences include volunteer work as a midwife at the Holy Family Birth Center on the border of Mexico, and teaching neonatal resuscitation to midwives in Swaziland, South Africa.  She has also volunteered as a nurse in Bolivia, Argentina & Nicaragua. She is currently a full-scope nurse midwife and faculty at the University of Utah College of Nursing.

Mark Harris, MBBS completed his M.B.Ch.B. degree in medicine at the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, United Kingdom in l992, was a vascular surgery resident at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in Scotland from 1992-93, an internal medicine resident at Gartnavel Hospital in Scotland in 1993, and an emergency medicine resident at Hairmyres Hospital in Lanarkshire, Scotland from 1993-96. He completed an internal medicine internship at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1998, and a residency in anesthesiology at the University of Utah School of Medicine in 2001. He was appointed as an Instructor in the Department of Anesthesiology, University of Utah School of Medicine, in July 2001, promoted to Assistant Professor in July 2002, and promoted to Associate Professor in July 2007. Dr. Harris has a special interest in anesthesia for liver transplantation, neurosurgery and in low-resource environments.

Nadia Cobbs, MS, PA-C has been involved for many years in bringing the only continuing medical education program for the physician assistants of Ghana.  Nadia has been recognized internationally for her passion for education of PAs globally by being invited to become part of a World Health Organization Technical Working Group that will develop a tool to assess health workforce education globally.  This group is tasked with helping shape the health workforce for the next 20 years.

Kent Farnsworth, MD is an obstetrician and gynecologist in the General Division of the University of Utah Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Farnsworth received his medical degree and completed his residency with the University of Utah in 1975. He has taught Continuing Education courses in a variety of fields, including Neonatal Resuscitation Training to physicians and child health providers in the People’s Republic of China and Techniques of Pelvic Surgery to health care providers in Mali Africa. Dr. Farnsworth's principle interests involve teaching pelvic reconstructive surgery and general Ob/Gyn training in developing countries.

Scott Benson, MD, PhD, MPH is an assistant professor in family and preventive medicine, public health, and infectious disease. In addition to his clinical obligations here in Utah, Dr. Benson is one of the leaders of the University of Utah’s Global Health Initiative. He has extensive travel medicine experience all over the world but is best known for leading and directing student groups in Ghana.

Susanna Cohen, CNM, MS is a founding member of an international NGO, PRONTO International, which provides interprofessional obstetric and neonatal simulation training in low resource settings in Kenya, Guatemala, Mexico, and now India. Her work focuses on preparing obstetric teams around the world to effectively respond to obstetric and neonatal emergencies to reduce perinatal morbidity and mortality. Susanna has also collaborated since 2007 with the National Institute of Public Health, Mexico, in the training and integration of professional midwives into the care system. She practices full-scope nurse midwifery and is faculty at the University of Utah College of Nursing.

Ty Dickerson, MD, MPH practices as a pediatric hospitalist at Primary Children’s Medical Center and has pursued interests in community-based maternal & child health in resource-poor settings such as worked as a program manager to develop and implement a community-based maternal and newborn health outreach program in rural Tibet. In addition to teaching clinical medicine, Dr. Dickerson directs a global health education program for pediatric residents, co-directs the Ghana Public Health Study Abroad Program and lectures frequently on clinical pediatrics and global health topics in a variety of settings.

William Stauffer, MD, MPH is an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. He is an expert in travel and tropical medicine working in clinical medicine, surveillance and policy development and serves as a technical advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where he works on issues of human mobility and how it effects human health (e.g. travel medicine, refugee & immigrant health). He works extensively overseas in clinical medicine and in public health, most recently in Peru, Haiti, and in Tanzania. His research areas have included infectious disease surveillance, malaria diagnostics, neglected tropical diseases, cost evaluation of public health programs, avian influenza, strongyloidiasis and viral hepatitis.