Women in Global Health Georgia (WGH Georgia) is a movement of professional women and their allies working in global health in the state of Georgia. The chapter launched in January of 2021.
Join us! Make sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with all of our chapter and organizational activities. As leadership and volunteer opportunities arise, we will reach out via the newsletter list.
State-level policy plays an important role in shaping the health of women and girls in Georgia, especially in a post-Roe era.
Please join Women in Global Health – Georgia, USA, for an interactive discussion event with legislative advocacy expert Megan Gordon. Megan will help you understand how you can be involved in the fight to protect the health of women and girls in the state of Georgia, share information about the current legislative session, and answer questions about state-level advocacy.
Join the newest chapter of Women in Global Health. Get news and engage with the WGH-Georgia, USA Chapter. The secretariat for this chapter is CGHI.
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Dr. Rachel Hall-Clifford is Assistant Professor in the Center for the Study of Human Health and the Department of Sociology at Emory University. She is a medical anthropologist who applies social science approaches to global health research and implementation. Dr. Hall-Clifford has conducted fieldwork in the central highlands of Guatemala on the delivery of health services for 15 years. Her research interests include accessible health care for marginalized populations, health systems strengthening post-genocide contexts, and global health fieldwork ethics, with a specific focus on gender-based violence in the field. She has held medical anthropology research positions at Oxford University, Harvard University, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Hall-Clifford is
Director of the NAPA-OT Field School in Guatemala and Co-Founder of safe+natal.
Andie Tucker is Project Manager for the Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy, a program of the Task Force for Global Health. In this role she facilitates projects that help the Partnership move closer to its goal: the elimination of leprosy. Prior to working with the Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy, she served as the Program Director at Restoration ATL, an organization that supports homeless women and children and was a fellow in the Georgia’s Women’s Policy Institute. She obtained her Master’s degree in Development Practice at Emory University and worked with the Child Health Mortality Prevention and Surveillance (CHAMPS) Network to connect CHAMPS’ work to external partners. Andie has conducted fieldwork in Malaysia and South Africa, addressing challenges related to gender and working in community-based initiatives to empower women and teen girls.
Lauren Abrams is a Project Manager at the Task Force for Global Health. In this role, she supports new programs at the Task Force and helps build internal organizational capacity, including developing policies and SOPs as well as ensuring essential services are provided across the organization to support programs. In her previous role at Children Without Worms (CWW) Lauren Abrams supported the STH Coalition and CWW annual planning, operations, and initiatives. Prior to joining CWW, Lauren served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique. There, she worked in community health promotion, focusing on issues related to HIV/AIDS, orphans and vulnerable children, and environmental health and sanitation. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Management and a Master of Public Affairs degree in Sustainable Development from Indiana University.
Jenelle Williams is a global community health and development strategist. She makes paradigm shifts using a cross-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach in order to create innovative solutions that strengthen the health and resilience of communities. She has almost 20 years of experience in health planning and community engagement. Jenelle is the Director of Programs for Global Health Action where she is responsible for programs that focus on improving maternal and child health. She is the Cochair of the Christian Connections for International Health Systems Working Group. Jenelle received her Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from American InterContinental University. Jenelle is pursuing her Doctorate in Public Health at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis.
Hannah Bergbower is a double-board certified Nurse Practitioner and Nurse-Midwife public health specialist, who focuses on international public health programming and implementation. She provides obstetric and gynecologic care to immigrant, refugee, and low-income communities locally and implements gender focused programming in Bangladesh with Integral Global. Her work has focused on international capacity building, interdisciplinary program development, and increasing access to care in vulnerable and low-resource contexts. Hannah’s academic and advisory committee appointments include Tufts University School of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Center for Global Health, and March of Dimes Mom and Baby Action Network National Advisory Committee. She is a member of the WGH/WHO Gender Equity Hub.
Samhita Kumar is a public health specialist with the Carter Center Mental Health Program. In her role, she leads efforts to strengthen public mental health systems, including designing and implementing evidence-based interventions and policies and sharing best practices from the program’s decade of work in Liberia. Prior to joining the Center in 2019, Kumar was with the World Bank, where she designed country projects and conducted analytical work to address the psychosocial well-being of vulnerable groups in fragile and conflict-affected situations. Kumar holds a master’s degree in epidemiology and global health from Columbia University.
Dr. Kashmira Date* is a medical epidemiologist with the Global Immunization Division in CDC’s Center for Global Health with over 15 years of public health and research experience on vaccines, epidemiology, surveillance and data analytic planning. She represents CDC on several global expert working groups and scientific advisory committees and is currently leading the Epidemiology Team on the International Taskforce for CDC’s COVID-19 response. She has been recognized with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by the Obama Administration and selected as one of 24 women leaders for the first cohort of the WomenLift Health Leadership Journey. Dr. Date has a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from Columbia University and is an alumnus of CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) program. She is interested in creating a mentoring/sponsorship framework for developing a next generation of inspiring global women leaders.
*Dr. Date is serving on WGH-Georgia Chapter in her personal capacity
Calbeth Alaribe is a first year Physician Assistant (PA) Student at Morehouse School of Medicine. She served as the Chapter Development Lead for Women in Global Health, providing strategic direction and planning in developing 21 chapters worldwide in 4 continents. She is the Co-founder and Co-chair of the Nigerian chapter of Women in Global Health. She serves as the Director of Strategic Planning for PA-S LEAD, an organization that advocates for leadership, equity, anti-racism and diversity within PA academia. Calbeth’s interests include developing sustainable and innovative programs that will solve complex global health issues and strengthen healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries. She received her Master’s degree in Public Health focused on global health from Emory University.
Alyssa Lowe is a Senior Research Associate at the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC) supporting the center’s work in population and global health. Alyssa has professional experience in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Americas. Her areas of expertise are in technical support and training; monitoring and evaluation; research design; coordination, and implementation; qualitative data collection, analysis and reporting; and global program development and management. Alyssa’s current projects include evaluation of The Carter Center’s Public Health Training Initiative in Sudan and Nigeria and supporting the strategic development of GHPC’s global portfolio. Lowe’s published research is currently available on the WHO’s website and has appeared in the journals Food and Nutrition Bulletin, PLOS One, Nutrition Journal, and BioMed Central Public Health.
Dr. Deborah McFarland has been involved in health policy and health financing issues for the past 35 years with particular interest in the interface of disease control programs and health systems, and the ethics and economics of resource allocation for public health priorities. Since 2000, Dr. McFarland has focused her service, practice, and applied research on neglected tropical diseases. She is/has been a member of the WHO Neglected Tropical Diseases Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG), the WHO technical consultative committee for the Africa Programme on Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), the WHO/UNICEF Tropical Disease Research Special Advisory Committee, and the Mectizan Expert Committee for neglected tropical diseases. Dr. McFarland served in the Peace Corps in Liberia, worked as a health services specialist for the United Mine Workers Health and Retirement Funds in central Appalachia, the director of a network of primary care clinics in the same region, and a health economist at CDC in the International Health Program Office. She was a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in health policy and finance at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and with the National Governors Association on Capitol Hill. Dr. McFarland holds a PhD in strategic management and industrial organization economics, an MSc in economics, an MPH in health policy and a BA in philosophy.
Maria Thacker Goethe is the founding CEO of The Center for Global Health Innovation (CGHI), an Atlanta-based organization formed in 2020 from the merger of Georgia’s major global health and life sciences organizations. CGHI was established as an impartial, leading organizer of the global health, life sciences and health technology community which embraces cross-sector collaboration and speaks with a collective voice.
Maria is also the president and CEO of Georgia Bio, a role she has held since Feb. 2019, after spending more than 12 years actively building the organization into one of the state’s top bioscience and MedTech associations.
Under her leadership, the Georgia Global Health Alliance, BioEd Institute and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center were established and now reside within CGHI.
Prior to Georgia Bio, Maria participated in a fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in environmental investigations, working closely with the National Center of Environmental Health in Chemical Demilitarization.
Maria serves on the board of the CJD Foundation, Southeast Life Sciences Association, and KSU Research Foundation, and as vice chair for the Council of State Bioscience Associations. Most recently, she was named to Georgia Trend magazine’s 2021 “100 Most Influential Georgians” list. Additionally, Maria has volunteered for 11 years with the Junior League of Atlanta.
Maria holds a master’s in public health from Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Sweet Briar College. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, Patrick, and daughter Cecilia.