Team

Emily Yale is the Director of Finance and Operations for the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity. She holds an MPH in Global Health from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Public Health from Elon University. Emily has worked for several global health organizations dedicated to improving the health of vulnerable populations. She has primarily worked in the areas of program management, finance and administration, operations, compliance, and business development.

Prior to joining the Center, Emily worked at the Center for Global Health at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), supporting community health projects in rural Uganda. Before MGH, Emily worked for an International NGO, John Snow, Inc. (JSI), where she managed large USAID-funded HIV/AIDS projects in East Africa and frequently traveled to field offices to provide local staff with training on operations, finance, and U.S. government contract compliance.

Rachel Gasana is the Senior Director of Advancement for the Center for Integration Science. She oversees partnerships, advocacy, marketing, and communications for the Center, the PEN-Plus Partnership, and the NCDI Poverty Network. Gasana brings 15 years of experience in nonprofit leadership, mobilizing $200M+ for high-growth, mission-driven organizations in a variety of contexts. While at Partners In Health, she expanded programming and partnerships across 11 countries and 3 continents, including support for the initial implementation of PEN-Plus. She started her career establishing a grassroots literacy nonprofit in New Haven, Connecticut, and building public and private sector support for a Tony-award-winning theatre company in the state’s Capitol. Gasana holds a BA from Dartmouth College (2006) and an MBA from the Yale School of Management (2021).

Gene Bukhman, MD, PhD, is a cardiologist and medical anthropologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), where he founded the Center for Integration Science and serves as its Executive Director. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine and an Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he also directs the Program in Global Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) and Social Change. He is the Senior Health and Policy Advisor on NCDs to Partners In Health (PIH), the Director of the BWH Advanced Clinical Fellowship in Cardiovascular Disease and Global Health Equity, and the Director of the BWH Research Fellowship in Type 1 Diabetes and Global Health Equity. Dr. Bukhman completed his medical training and doctorate in medical anthropology at the University of Arizona, an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a cardiology fellowship at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Over the past 15 years, Dr. Bukhman has argued that for those living in extreme poverty, NCDs are best understood as part of the “long tail” of global health equity that demands a new “science of integration.” He has translated this critique into practical delivery strategies such as the Package of Essential NCD Interventions – Plus (PEN-Plus), that are now impacting patients’ lives in more than a dozen countries.

Dr. Bukhman is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters that apply a range of methodologies from ethnography and archival research to epidemiology and mathematical modeling to identify solutions to the problem of “NCDI Poverty.” Dr. Bukhman was the lead-author and co-chair of the 1996-2020 Lancet Commission on Reframing NCDs and Injuries for the Poorest Billion. He is now co-chair of the 22-country NCDI Poverty Network launched in December of 2020 to support implementation of the Lancet Commission’s recommendations.

Neil Gupta is the Policy Director for the NCDI Poverty Network and serves a lead role in facilitating and supporting National NCDI Poverty Commissions and the NCDI Poverty Network Steering Committee. An internist and pediatrician by training, Dr. Gupta was previously the Chief Medical Officer for Partners In Health in Rwanda, where he was responsible for the strategy, design, and implementation of clinical programs in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. He later joined PIH’s NCD Synergies team and supported the development of the Lancet NCDI Poverty Commission from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Gupta is also the Primary Investigator for the Simplifying Hepatitis C Antiviral Therapy for Elsewhere in the Developing World study, which aims to promote access and availability of Hepatitis C treatment. Dr. Gupta is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Harvard School of Public Health, and he completed his residency training at Brigham & Women’s and Boston Children’s Hospitals. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Gedeon Ngoga is the Director of PEN-Plus Training for the NCDI Poverty Network. Over the last decade, Gedeon’s work has focused on the implementation of NCD care delivery models in low-resource settings including developing a dedicated training and mentoring program for PEN-Plus health care workers dominated mainly by nurses and clinical officers in the PIH supported clinics. This has involved clinical duties as well as a wide programmatic and leadership role for the NCD program which eventually led to national implementation of the model and scale-up of NCD services to all district hospitals of Rwanda.

Mr. Ngoga has a Master of Public Health in International Health and Development and his current role supports Network countries in addressing knowledge gaps to achieve global health equity by developing career pathways. Gedeon works on training models that teach and equip non-specialist NCD providers with needed competencies to manage severe NCD conditions in their home countries, which prevents suffering and death among the most vulnerable.

Emily Wroe, MD, MPH, an internist and global health expert, serves as the Director of Programs for the NCDI Poverty Network and the Center for Integration Science. In this role she supports the implementation and expansion of PEN-Plus programs.

Dr. Wroe’s expertise in health systems for chronic diseases stems from several years working as Partners In Health’s Chief Medical Officer in Malawi, where she worked closely with the Ministry of Health to strengthen health care in the rural district of Neno. In Malawi she led the team to integrate HIV and noncommunicable disease clinics, spearheaded a stepped-wedge study of a community health worker program, and helped launch two clinics for patients with severe NCDs, which was the beginning of the PEN-Plus programming in Malawi. Her role expanded to support southern Africa as NCD Synergies’ Associate Director of Policy and Implementation and as the co-chair to the Ministry of Health for Malawi’s National NCDs and Injuries of Poverty Commission.

Dr. Wroe is also deeply experienced in pandemic response and acts as a Senior Advisor for PIH’s COVID-19 response. She graduated from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health and completed her residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Alma Adler is the Research and Monitoring and Evaluation Director for the Center for Integration Science (CIS) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital since 2018. Dr. Adler began her career as a bioanthropologist receiving her PhD in 2005, but later received an MSc in Public Health/Developing Countries, Epidemiology Stream from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Before joining CIS, Dr. Adler was an Assistant Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where she was a member of the Centre for Chronic Diseases and the Centre for  Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive, & Child Health. Other positions Dr. Adler has held include systematic review specialist at the Cochrane Heart Group and Science Officer at the World Heart Federation. Dr. Adler’s research focuses on three areas: Implementation science, mixed methods evaluations of complex interventions, and evidence synthesis. She has led implementation research projects in nine countries on three continents. Dr. Adler has over 50 publications and numerous media appearances.

Paula Brewer Byron is the Communications Director for the NCDI Poverty Network. She has spent most of her communications career in the fields of medicine, public health, and human rights. Most recently she worked at Virginia Tech, first as communications director for a startup medical school and biomedical research institute, then as senior editor at the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. For the previous dozen years, she was editor of Harvard Medical School’s magazine, and before that she served as communications director for what was then the Harvard AIDS Institute, an initiative of the Harvard School of Public Health. One of Byron’s principal specialties is publications. In addition to editing Harvard Medicine, she has served as editor of Illumination, an annual magazine at Virginia Tech; Carilion Medicine, the biannual magazine of a regional health system; Silent Spring Review, a publication focused on the environmental causes of breast cancer; Baobab, the daily newspaper for an AIDS in Africa conference in Senegal; and a range of publications for the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria, the Reebok Human Rights Awards Program, and the Harvard AIDS Institute. Byron has also edited three books on AIDS in Africa and coauthored a book on human rights heroes around the world. She earned her bachelor’s in English at Williams College and her master’s in Asian Studies at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Chantelle Boudreaux is focused on understanding how to build better health systems, specifically how to merge a country’s epidemiologic profile with their existing resources to best respond to current and anticipated health needs.

At the Center for Integration Science, her research focuses this question at the hospital level. This requires an understanding of the optimal clustering of tasks among providers, and a consideration of the interfaces both within and outside of the health system, to better understand how diverse clinical skills and interdisciplinary roles, programs, and service tiers can influence the delivery of healthcare services and population health outcomes.

Chantelle completed her doctoral studies at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She also holds Masters degrees from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

Dr. Apoorva Gomber is a physician from India with an interest in global health centered around pediatric diabetes, health equity, disease epidemiology, and improving access to care in low- and middle-income countries. She graduated with a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) in the Department of Global Health and Population from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Gomber has worked on various advocacy initiatives with global organizations to improve access to insulin and understanding childhood diabetes. Her research interests focus to overcome health disparities in diabetes care globally and looking for solutions to complex problems using evidence-based data and cross-sectoral collaborations. She also serves as one of the WHO Technical Advisory Group of Experts on Diabetes to further WHO’s leadership and coordination role in promoting and monitoring global action against diabetes.

Apoorva served as the South East Asia Regional Representative-elect from 2017-2019 for the Young Leaders in Diabetes Program by International Diabetes Federation and also for the Young Leadership Program at NCD Child.

Apoorva advocates for overcoming stigma among people living with diabetes and the prevention of diabetes-related complications. Outside of research, she spends her time traveling, hiking, and running marathons.