March 17, 2026

Dear Ronda and Bill,

George Q Daley, MD, PhD | Dean of the Faculty of Medicine | Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115 | t: (617) 432-1501 | e: George_Daley@hms.harvard.edu

I’m pleased to share this report on the Ronda Stryker and William Johnston Funds in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Your support enables physicians, scientists, and health care workers from around the world to receive outstanding training, conduct pioneering research, and provide high-quality care for patients in the most vulnerable communities.

This year’s report highlights the work by HMS faculty and students on climate change, infectious disease, childhood development, and global surgery. Your generosity supports research and training in Peru, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and many other countries, directly improving the health and well-being of disadvantaged populations.

The Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (DGHSM) is deeply grateful for your steadfast commitment to alleviating suffering worldwide and for your partnership in advancing global health equity. Under Vikram Patel’s leadership as chair, the DGHSM continues to develop interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship, education, and strategic partnerships. We look forward to your participation at the next GHAS meeting. 

During the past year, Dr. Megan Murray navigated major disruptions in federal research funding while launching a new project at the intersection of climate change and infectious disease, supported by Stryker and Johnston funds.

Over several years, Dr. Murray has built a network of clinicians, public health practitioners, and researchers from low- and middle-income countries who confront the health impacts of climate change in their daily work. Many partners are based at sites supported by Partners In Health or by Harvard affiliated NGOs and public agencies. The network spans settings where climate change poses immediate and visible threats rather than distant risks, including Malawi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Lesotho, Guatemala, Peru, Guyana, Madagascar, Alaska, New Mexico, and the Sámi regions of the Arctic. Dr. Murray convened three in-person meetings and additional virtual gatherings to sustain collaboration despite geographic distance and limited resources.

This collaboration underscored the urgent need for better tools to detect and track infectious diseases in remote, climate vulnerable regions. Rural communities are experiencing changes in rainfall, flooding, and temperature that alter the distribution of insect borne diseases. At the same time, loss of traditional livelihoods pushes people into activities such as artisanal mining and logging, where they encounter unfamiliar infections that local health systems are ill equipped to diagnose or treat.

In response, Dr. Murray launched a project in the Peruvian Amazon, a region highly vulnerable to climate change, deforestation, and ecological disruption. The Amazon is home to remarkable biodiversity and Indigenous communities whose health depends on the integrity of their environment. Conventional disease surveillance, however, is extremely difficult. Most communities lack sewer systems; human waste often enters rivers that also provide drinking and bathing water. These rivers, in turn, offer a unique surveillance opportunity: by sampling river water, researchers can detect signals of infectious diseases circulating in nearby populations.

The project adapts wastewater based epidemiology—widely used in cities—to remote, unsewered settings. Rather than transferring urban methods directly, Dr. Murray’s team is developing approaches that function without electricity, refrigeration, or advanced laboratory infrastructure and that are feasible in small, dispersed communities. Partners include a Peruvian university, local and national public health authorities, and Amanatari, an NGO that supports Indigenous livelihoods and environmental stewardship.

Dr. Murray and her team recently completed an exploratory field trip to four remote villages in Loreto Province, Peru. Working alongside local partners, they collected environmental samples under real world conditions and refined protocols for sample collection and processing. The trip strengthened collaborations with Peruvian colleagues, deepened trust with participating communities, and positioned the team to implement ongoing disease monitoring as climate pressures intensify.

This work lays the foundation for sustained surveillance across the Amazon and, ultimately, in other climate vulnerable regions. It also advances one of Dr. Murray’s long standing goals: building local capacity so that communities and health systems can monitor and respond to health threats themselves. By linking environmental change, infectious disease, and community health, the project demonstrates a strong commitment to scientific innovation, equity, partnership, and long term resilience. 

The Research Core faced considerable challenges this past year. In recent years, core members had secured substantial NIH funding. When federal funding was disrupted in the spring, the core struggled to maintain projects and retain staff. These disruptions affected both Boston based teams and international partners. Harvard provided partial bridge funding, preventing abrupt project terminations. Most grants were reinstated by the fall, but months of uncertainty and intensive negotiations with NIH led to delays. New rules governing foreign sub awards required major restructuring of several grants. In some cases, the core had to remove foreign components from NIH funded work and support those activities through other sources.

The core also experienced key personnel changes. Core faculty member Bethany Hedt Gauthier accepted a full professorship at the University of North Carolina. The core celebrates this advancement while recognizing the loss of a central leader in research capacity–building efforts. Dr. Hedt Gauthier remains actively engaged as a collaborator. Other members were temporarily absent—one while welcoming a new baby and another due to serious illness. Despite these challenges, the core has returned to a more stable footing and continues its work with renewed focus. 

Research Core leadership continues to focus on tuberculosis and climate change. One ongoing study in Peru investigates bacterial genetic factors associated with failure to respond to TB therapy. Another examines how both host and microbial factors contribute to long term lung damage after TB treatment, with the goal of preventing post TB lung impairment. Complementing this work, the core is studying the health impacts of climate change in impoverished settings and has established a wastewater based epidemiology study in the Peruvian Amazon to monitor climate related changes in infectious disease incidence.

The Global Health Research Core at Harvard Medical School is addressing the impact of climate change–driven crises with collaborators from more than a dozen nations, including Ethiopia, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone in Africa; Bangladesh and India in Asia; Sami communities in northern Norway and Sweden in Europe; and Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, and the United States (specifically, Indigenous groups in Alaska and the Navajo Nation) in the Americas. 

From 2024 to 2025, the core team published 86 papers in peer reviewed medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, and The Lancet. Despite the funding setbacks, the core secured new awards, including an NIH grant to study the long term health consequences of tuberculosis, commonly referred to as post TB lung disease.

Dr. Murray directs the Global Health Research Core, which provides research support and training for the DGHSM’s non‑governmental organization (NGO) and public‑sector partners in low‑ and middle‑income countries (LMICs) and other resource‑constrained settings.

Over the past year, Dr. Demetrice Jordan strengthened her research at the intersection of geospatial science, genomics, and global health equity through new collaborations and competitive fellowships. She received the Global Virus Network Research and Training Fellowship ($15,000), which integrates molecular science and spatial analysis to track viral evolution across genomes and geographies. In fall 2025, her team began wastewater sampling from community pit latrines in QwaQwa, South Africa, and they are now conducting shotgun metagenomic analyses of these samples in collaboration with the Broad Institute and the University of the Free State.

Dr. Jordan applied for the Simons Foundation PIVOT Fellowship ($160,000) and received the Paul Farmer Collaborative Implementation Science Training Fellowship, which combines geospatial analysis with implementation science to strengthen infectious disease surveillance in Rwanda. She also submitted a Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grant proposal that extends her geospatial genomic framework to study links between environmental change and pathogen transmission.

Her leadership portfolio continues to grow. She now serves as co chair of the HMS MassCPR Community Engagement Working Group and remains a member of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Geospatial Science and Human Security Division Scientific Advisory Committee, the Board of Trustees of the Society of Public Health Education, and the editorial board of The Professional Geographer. Dr. Jordan submitted two manuscripts for publication—one on promoting equity in spatial access to TB services during private sector engagement and another on adaptation pathways for rural African communities facing climate driven water scarcity. She also continues to mentor early career scholars in the use of geospatial methods in public health research.

This year brought significant challenges, including an uncertain funding environment and complex logistics for fieldwork across international sites. Civil unrest and student protests at the University of the Free State forced her to end some laboratory training activities early. Through strong partnerships with colleagues in South Africa, at Harvard Medical School, and at the Broad Institute, Dr. Jordan preserved data quality and analytical continuity while diversifying funding sources and strengthening interdisciplinary collaborations.

Looking ahead, Dr. Jordan will refine pit latrine wastewater sampling protocols, validate metagenomic workflows, and integrate genomic, spatial, and environmental data into a unified geodatabase to support scalable models for pathogen detection. She plans to apply for a Motsepe African Innovation Grant and to participate in a genomics training program at the Institute of Genomics and Global Health at Redeemer’s University in Nigeria. She will complete the Paul Farmer Fellowship in Rwanda, teach research methods at the University of the Free State and climate change and human health at the University of Botswana, and continue to develop three new manuscripts and a book that weaves together geography, music, and health.

Dr. Jordan shared her work at the American Geographical Society Annual Symposium on Climate, Conflict, and Cooperation, the Harvard Global Health Institute Burke and Climate Change Fellows Exposition, and the Society of Public Health Education Annual Meeting. A highlight of the year came when King Morena Moremoholo Mopeli of the Bakoena Nation invited her to speak at the Heritage Day Celebration in QwaQwa, South Africa, underscoring the importance of community partnership and cultural respect in her research.

Dr. Ann Miller’s work in the Global Health Research Core focuses on linking rigorous research to the service activities of the Global Health Delivery Partnership (GHDP). She co founded and co chairs the GHDP Early Child Development Consortium, launched in 2014, which brings together researchers, developmental psychologists, pediatricians, and program implementers to promote healthy development among children living in the world’s lowest resource settings.

Dr. Miller serves as co investigator on child development projects in Guatemala, India, Peru, and Rwanda; on mHealth initiatives assessing maternal health in Guatemala and the United States; and on studies evaluating aflatoxin exposure and infant growth. A newly funded project in Guatemala addresses the dual burden of maternal obesity and infant undernutrition. With partners in Guatemala and India, she presented both a poster and an oral session at the International Developmental Pediatrics Association Congress on factors associated with developmental difficulties and nurturing care outcomes. The team is finalizing analysis of an NIH funded, five year trial assessing the impact of a nurturing care intervention on children’s development in Guatemala and India. Dr. Miller also presented at the Consortium of Universities in Global Health’s annual meeting on her 2024 Lancet Global Health manuscript, which examines how Indigenous or minority language use relates to developmental risk as assessed in global surveys.

As a lead trainer in the 2023–2024 Intermediate Operational Research Training (IORT) program in Rwanda, Dr. Miller helped build capacity among Rwandan researchers, academics, government officials, and program implementers. She mentored a cohort of Rwandan students as they developed their first research manuscripts; two of these papers are now under journal review: one on nurturing care interventions and infant outcomes, and another on developmental outcomes at age five for high risk rural children.

This year, Dr. Miller assumed leadership of the DGHSM/DGHE research working group, which brings together senior faculty, junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and researchers from both the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard and the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The group provides pre submission review of grant proposals, fostering mentorship and strengthening research across a wide range of topics. Dr. Miller also served as a research mentor for an inaugural cohort of faculty at the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Rwanda and helped launch a parallel research working group between DGHSM and UGHE in November 2025.

Within the MMSc in Global Health Delivery program, Dr. Miller continues as faculty mentor and committee chair for Dr. Cinta Sari’s thesis on mothers’ experiences with nutrition supplement programs for children with long term malnutrition in Indonesia. Together with Dr. Hannah Gilbert, she led the MMSc manuscript writing intensive in April 2025. A paper on maternal mental health among parents of children with disabilities in Rwanda, written by recent MMSc graduate Dr. Alain Ahikashiye, is currently in second round review at BMC Public Health.

Dr. Miller also collaborates with Dr. MaryCatherine Arbour on an evaluation of a housing program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital designed for patients experiencing homelessness or substandard housing. The study assesses effects on hypertension, diabetes, and mental health. Data analysis is complete, and manuscript preparation is in progress. 

In the 2024–2025 academic year, Dr. Lindsey Zeve focused on teaching and mentoring across Harvard Medical School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In the fall semester, Dr. Zeve taught the DGHSM’s flagship undergraduate course, Gen Ed 1093: Who Lives, Who Dies: Reimagining Global Health; a medical anthropology course on the implications of the replication crisis in science for public health policy, practice, and health equity; and a master’s‑level course on the fundamentals of social medicine for students in the Master of Media, Medicine, and Health program. In the spring semester, Dr. Zeve offered a social medicine methods course and a seminar examining aging, poverty, and chronic disease from a social medicine perspective.

​Dr. Zeve mentored a Master of Bioethics student whose capstone project examines chronic disease management and access to care in rural Appalachia, a visiting PhD student studying public health metrics and policymaking in Oslo, and a Harvard College undergraduate completing a secondary field in Global Health and Health Policy. Over the year, Dr. Zeve completed an article on how the replication crisis in observational epidemiology affects health equity research and developed a book proposal on caregiving for vulnerable elderly people in the United States.

Dr. Eugene Richardson is an infectious disease physician and ecological anthropologist whose work focuses on biosocial approaches to epidemic disease and climate change. He serves as Assistant Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Richardson has emerged as a national and international leader in research on the social, historical, and ecological determinants of epidemic disease. His work critiques conventional international public health approaches, arguing that many global disease control programs still rely on colonial models of containment rather than building equitable health systems in low resource and formerly colonized countries. His contributions to the movement to “decolonize” global health—including his widely reviewed book Epidemic Illusions—have drawn international attention through policy engagement and more than 140 invited presentations.

Dr. Richardson founded and directs the HMS Planetary Health Lab, which studies the structural determinants of adaptive capacity and the health effects of climate change. The lab receives support from the Harvard Salata Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Harvard Mittal Institute, and Partners In Health. 

In 2025, Dr. Richardson published eight papers. These included work on highly scalable multiplex serology; post‑Omicron SARS‑CoV‑2 antibody prevalence in Sierra Leone; relational approaches to infectious disease research; the impact of neutralizing antibodies on SARS‑CoV‑2 variant replication; reparative justice and COP29; climate reparations and redistributive justice; the health effects of climate change on non‑citizen children from Latin America and the Caribbean living in the United States; and a chapter on the health effects of climate change in the 22nd edition of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Richardson secured three new grants totaling $95,000: a Salata Institute Seed Grant for work on climate adaptation in vulnerable socio‑economic systems in Brazil ($25,000); an RWJ Foundation “Making the Public Health Case for Reparations” grant focused on climate change reparations ($20,000); and a Partners In Health grant on adaptation frontiers in vulnerable socio‑economic systems ($50,000).

He completed a one‑year appointment as an NIH Climate and Health Scholar and delivered 10 national and international presentations on topics including decolonization in global health, the health effects of climate change, research and development governance, climate reparations, and mpox socio‑behavioral research. The Walter and Patricia Rodney Commission for Reparations Special Issue in BMJ Global Health, which Dr. Richardson co‑chairs, is scheduled for publication in February 2026. The HMS Planetary Health Lab also grew to include its inaugural U.S. Health Equity postdoctoral fellow.

Sam Muhanguzi, MMSc ’25

Sam Muhanguzi is a health care management professional from Rwanda who has worked in curriculum development and management for medical education at the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) since 2021. His interests include mental health literacy, equitable health care, social justice, and system strengthening. He aims to design and implement programs that address the burden of disease in rural and resource constrained communities, with a strong belief in the power of tailored interventions to reach underserved populations.

Thesis Topic: Toward understanding the socioeconomic impact of integrating mental health into primary care in rural Rwanda: A qualitative study

Polycarp Ori, MPH, MMSc ’25

Polycarp Ori is from Nigeria and spent more than a decade in the Nigerian Air Force, honing his expertise in clinical laboratory diagnosis and public health practice. He served in the security compromised northern region, working in both health facilities and communities, and participated in the Nigerian Air Force Humanitarian and Medical Aid Team at internally displaced persons camps in Dalori, Borno State (2015, 2018). Polycarp holds a degree in medical laboratory science and an MPH in field epidemiology and laboratory practice. He has published work on the descriptive epidemiology of measles in Bauchi State, Nigeria, and remains committed to addressing the social determinants of health care in his country.

Thesis Topic: Understanding socio cultural and economic determinants of childhood immunization uptake among communities in Kaduna State, Nigeria: an explanatory sequential mixed methods study

Saravanan Thangarajan, MDS, MBA, FICOI, FAD, MMSc ’25

Dr. Saravanan Thangarajan is a clinician specializing in maxillofacial prosthodontics and has worked as an associate professor, mentoring undergraduate and postgraduate students. He has published extensively in international peer reviewed journals and has received six research fellowships. As State Public Health Consultant for Tamil Nadu, India, he transformed the 104 Health Helpline into the state’s COVID 19 Control Room, ensuring essential patient care and disseminating WHO approved public health measures to residents. He developed digital training programs for ambulance paramedics, expanded telecounseling for mental health, and strengthened maternal and child health systems. Dr. Thangarajan has received numerous national and international accolades, including invitations to give lectures and media appearances, and has received formal recognition from the Health Minister of Tamil Nadu for his contributions during the pandemic.

Thesis Topic: Environmental and psychosocial hardships on maternal mental health in resource limited settings – Tamil Nadu

Mariama Mahmoud, MD, MSc 

Dr. Mariama Mahmoud is a physician from Sierra Leone who holds a master’s degree in Tropical Medicine and International Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. With more than 12 years of experience, she has worked extensively with underserved communities affected by tuberculosis, HIV, and leprosy. Dr. Mahmoud has held numerous clinical roles, including medical superintendent of a TB/leprosy referral hospital. Before joining the MMSc GHD program, she was program manager of the National Leprosy and Tuberculosis Control Programme, where she advanced holistic, patient centered care. She has contributed to TB research and has published on leprosy and COVID 19 vaccination.

Thesis Topic: Evaluating the readiness for community based management of MDR/RR TB in Sierra Leone: A mixed methods study

Ikechukwu Okereke Nnanna, MD 

Dr. Ikechukwu Okereke Nnanna was born and raised in Nigeria and served as a medical officer with Partners In Health Sierra Leone, providing clinical care in a district hospital. He draws motivation from a strong commitment to caring for vulnerable and marginalized populations.

Thesis Topic: Causes of severe acute malnutrition among children under five in Koidu, Sierra Leone

Dr. Michelle Joseph is a trauma and orthopedic surgeon and a Stryker funded faculty member in the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change. With support from the Stryker Global Surgery Fellowship Fund, her scholarly work centers on the IMPACT Study (Integrated Military Partnerships and Civilian Trauma) , which aims to improve access to safe, timely care for traumatically injured patients by strengthening trauma systems, particularly in low and middle income countries (LMICs).

Globally, injuries cause millions of deaths and many more cases of long term disability each year, with roughly 90 percent of this burden falling on LMICs. In many of these settings, trauma systems are fragile or fragmented. Even robust civilian systems can quickly become overwhelmed by natural disasters or conflict. Dr. Joseph’s research starts from the premise that military and civilian health systems share a strong interest in trauma care and often operate in parallel. She and her team are developing an evidence based framework to guide integration of civilian and military trauma systems, enabling them to build capacity together and align with national health and surgical plans.

The IMPACT Study is a multinational collaboration with representation from all six World Health Organization regions. The team is following a five phase plan that includes a global mixed methods study, a Delphi consensus process, framework development and analysis, and pilot implementation. With support from a Stepping Strong Innovation Award, the mixed methods phase collected data from 78 countries. Nearly 300 respondents completed a trauma capacity and integration survey, and the team conducted nine focus groups—one in each region and country-specific groups in Sri Lanka, Peru, and Ukraine. Findings from this work have already produced a global scoping review and case series on civilian–military trauma system integration and now inform analyses of integration scores and emerging themes. 

In 2025, Dr. Joseph, as principal investigator, secured a major grant from the U.S. Department of Defense Global Health Engagement Research Initiative— “Integration of Military Civilian Trauma Systems in Poland and the Baltics”—providing $799,998 over two years (2025–2027). She and the IMPACT team published a global scoping review of military–civilian trauma system integration in the International Journal of Surgery (2024), a global case series in the Journal of Surgical Research (2022), and an in depth analysis of the 2010 Haiti earthquake response in Frontiers in Public Health (2022). Additional manuscripts in preparation examine global survey results, thematic patterns of integration, and a validated integration score.

Dr. Joseph’s work has attracted growing international attention. In 2024–2025, members of the IMPACT team presented invited and competitively selected work at the ICMM World Congress, the European Society for Trauma and Emergency Surgery, the Academic Surgical Congress, and the Indo Pacific Military Health Exchange. In December 2025, she delivered three high level presentations at a four day Delphi consensus meeting with the Philippine government and the Philippine College of Surgeons, mapping and prioritizing opportunities for military–civilian collaboration in trauma care. In early 2026, United States Indo Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) and Special Operations Command Pacific (SOCPAC) invited the IMPACT team to collaborate on a Building Partner Capacity proposal to Congress to strengthen trauma care in the Philippines. The Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine also requested IMPACT’s technical support to develop a national trauma registry in partnership with NATO and the NATO Security Assistance to Ukraine initiative.

Teaching and mentorship are integral to Dr. Joseph’s work. In 2025, she served as Course Director and instructor for Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and taught sessions on implementation science, health equity, and survey development for trainees in the PGSSC. She also taught on a Primary Trauma Care instructor course at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Joseph mentors two PGSSC military fellows—an orthopedic resident and a general surgery resident in the U.S. Army—helping them build strong quantitative and qualitative research skills. In summer 2025, she mentored two undergraduates from Spelman and Morehouse Colleges through the W.E.B. Du Bois Scholars Program, guiding them through a nine week research experience that included training in coding, qualitative methods, and consensus techniques. She plans to continue this level of mentorship in the coming academic year.