The Strategic Analysis, Research & Training (START) Center is thrilled to introduce the ten newest team members joining our Center this fall. The team includes one MBA student from the Foster School of Business, two MPH and three PhD students in Epidemiology, and two PhD students in Implementation Science. In addition to the research assistants and global innovation fellow joining our team, START has also engaged two new faculty leads to begin this fall. Learn more about each of these impressive new team members below.

INCOMING GLOBAL INNOVATION FELLOW

Angela Yang

Angela Yang is an MBA Candidate at University of Washington Foster School of Business, with experience in management consulting, process improvement, and health care operations. Originally from Michigan, Angela studied Neuroscience at the University of Michigan. She is excited for the opportunity to combine her business and research skills to support public health organizations.

 

 

 

 

INCOMING RESEARCH ASSISTANTS

Nicole Asa, MPH

Nicole Asa is a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington. She received her MPH in Epidemiology at the University of Washington, and her undergraduate degree in public health from the Ohio State University. During her undergraduate studies, Nicole was introduced to injury and violence prevention research while working for the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where she focused on physical and cognitive recovery from sports-related concussions. Throughout Nicole’s MPH program, she worked with the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center (HIPRC) researching various policies aimed at reducing firearm related injuries and deaths. She also worked with the Center for Obesity Research and Action evaluating Seattle’s Sweetened Beverage Tax. Through the START Center, Nicole is excited to get involved with project management, data analysis, and investigating new topic areas. Nicole’s research interests include injury and violence prevention, nutrition, and policy.

 

Amanda Brumwell, MSPH

Amanda Brumwell is a PhD Student in Implementation Science in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. Prior to this, she served as the Managing Director of Advance Access & Delivery, overseeing the implementation of programs providing care for tuberculosis, chronic disease including diabetes and hypertension, and harm reduction in South Africa, India, Peru, and on the US-Mexico border. Amanda’s research has focused primarily on understanding strategies to improve case-finding and care delivery for TB and chronic disease in low- and middle-income settings. Most recently, she has led operational and implementation research for improving the delivery of TB diagnostics and multi-disease care platforms with the Zero TB Initiative. She was the lead social scientist for a FIND-led study on values and preferences for COVID-19 self-testing in South Africa. Her past research projects include a review of TB treatment literacy materials with the Harvard Medical School Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, formative research related to opioid use in South Africa, and research on maternal and perinatal mental health in displaced populations. She earned her master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Population Health Management and earned a BS in Biology and BA in Global Health at Duke University.

 

Rezaul Hossain, MBBS, MPH

Rezaul Hossain is an MPH student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington. Rezaul is a Bangladeshi registered physician and clinical researcher by profession. He received his Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS) degree from the University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Later, he graduated from BRAC University’s James P Grant School of Public Health’s global classroom with his first international MPH (general track). Rezaul began his career in December 2019 as a Clinical Fellow at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he bravely offered his services as a front-line COVID-19 treating physician and as a clinical researcher in Bangladesh. During his three years of service (two as a clinical fellow and one as a research trainee), he gained experience in clinical research and public health program implementation on a national level, in collaboration with the government of Bangladesh. His research includes the pioneering study of COVID-19 emerging variants and their clinical outcomes among Bangladeshi COVID-19 patients. Rezaul is passionate about transferring biomedical innovations from the lab to clinical and community settings. He is eager to learn about large clinical trials, big data analysis, and cutting-edge epidemiological techniques while studying at UW and working at START.

 

Chidozie Declan Iwu, MPH, MSc

Chidozie is a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington. He is passionate about infectious diseases epidemiology. He is also interested in understanding the transmission dynamics of emerging/re-emerging microbial diseases using the One-health framework. Chidozie previously worked on a project that characterised antimicrobial resistance within the environment-public health interface. He also assessed the implementation status of the Global Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance in Africa using data retrieved from the World Health Organization. Chidozie served as a graduate researcher at the Clinical Unit of the Council for Medical Schemes, South Africa and a teaching assistant at the School of Health Systems and Public Health, University of Pretoria. His overarching research interests include infectious diseases epidemiology, molecular epidemiology, outbreak investigation, disease surveillance, disease control, and antimicrobial resistance.

 

Ana Krause, RN, MSc (IPH)

Ana Krause is a Global Health Implementation Science PhD at the University of Washington. She completed her MSc in International Public Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) in 2017 and has a Bachelor of Nursing Science from Queen’s University in Canada. Ana has over a decade of clinical nursing experience in emergency and humanitarian settings in Canada, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania. She has supported monitoring and evaluation and research projects in Lebanon and Uganda, as well as working with LSTM’s METRe group in South Sudan in 2018. Ana most recently worked with LSTM’s Emergency Obstetric Care and Quality of Care (EmOc & QoC) Unit supporting program delivery and research to increase the quality and availability of integrated HIV, TB, malaria and antenatal and postnatal care in Chad and Togo. She also led an operational research project assessing regional variations in risk to maternal and child health in Chad. Her research interests include non-communicable diseases, strengthening surveillance systems, and improving patient outcomes.

 

Lasata Shrestha

Lasata Shrestha is an incoming MPH student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington. She graduated magna cum laude from Troy University with a BS in Biological sciences in 2019. Before joining START, she worked as a research scientist at the University of Washington Virology Laboratory investigating the genetic epidemiology and immunology of SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious diseases. She also collaborated with the Kenya Research and Training Center to investigate the impact of herpes virus infection in HIV-infected Kenyan infants. Her research interests include infectious disease epidemiology, maternal and child health, molecular immunology, and community-based surveillance.

 

 

Anna Sutton, MPH

Anna Sutton is a PhD student in Epidemiology at the University of Washington. She holds an MPH in Epidemiology with a Maternal and Child Health focus from the University of Washington. Anna has served as a member of the Arthritis Foundation’s Medical and Scientific Advisory Council, Juvenile Arthritis Chair for the Arthritis Foundation’s Great West Local Leadership Board, and as a legislative advocate. She recently facilitated a family education outreach summer camp program for families of children with pediatric rheumatic diseases living in the Pacific Northwest. As an undergraduate, Anna investigated maternal infection as a potential risk factor for juvenile arthritis diagnosis. In collaboration with the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA), her recent work has focused on effective medication withdrawal strategies for children with well-controlled juvenile arthritis. Anna’s primary research interests are centered on etiology and outcomes related to juvenile arthritis and other pediatric rheumatic diseases, healthcare policy, and maternal and child health.

INCOMING FACULTY LEADS

Brandon Guthrie, PhD, MPH

Dr. Brandon Guthrie, PhD, is an epidemiologist and Associate Professor of Global Health and Epidemiology at the University of Washington. His specific research interests focus on improving engagement in care among people living with HIV. Dr. Guthrie has NIH-funded research projects based in Nairobi, Kenya that are evaluating interventions to improve linkage and retention in HIV/AIDS care, expedite treatment initiation, and reduce mortality. His research includes both randomized intervention trials as well as mixed methods and implementation science approaches to evaluate interventions that are tailored to achieve both high effectiveness and acceptability. Dr. Guthrie is an instructor in introductory and advanced epidemiologic methods courses at the UW as well as 10-week distance learning course focused on epidemiology and biostatistics. Dr. Guthrie is the co-editor of the COVID-19 Literature Situation Report, which is a daily digest with summaries of the most relevant articles related to the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Carol Levin, PhD, MSc

Dr. Carol Levin is a health economist and clinical associate professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the costs and cost-effectiveness of introducing and scaling up public health interventions and new technologies, including mHealth technologies to strengthen the delivery of mental health and reproductive, maternal and child prevention and treatment services. Previously, she provided technical guidance and coordinated the economic analysis for the Disease Control Priorities Third Edition—a nine-volume series aimed at strengthening evidence based priority setting in health and nutrition. She was the director of the Global Health Cost Consortium from 2012 to 2016—a project that generated improved estimates of costs for HIV and TB for use in planning, budgeting and economic evaluation. She is currently the director of the project ‘Strengthening the Economic Evaluation of Multisectoral Strategies for Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition)’. She teaches and mentors students on global health economics and cost methods in global health.