Team Members Archive - Page 2 of 4 - Center for Integration Science

Emily Wroe, MD, MPH

Emily Wroe, MD, MPH, an internist and global health expert, serves as the Senior 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, PhD, MSc, MA

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 Byron, MA

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.

Chantelle Boudreaux, ScD, MA

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.

Apoorva Gomber, MD, MPH

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.

Colin Pfaff, MD

Colin Pfaff, MD, is the Associate Director of Programs at the NCDI Poverty Network and the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Pfaff is a family medicine and public health doctor from South Africa, where he is currently based. He has more than 25 years of experience in district-level primary health care services in South Africa, Nepal, and Malawi, including HIV, tuberculosis, and noncommunicable disease programs.

Sheila Klassen, MD

Sheila Klassen, MD, an adult cardiologist with subspecialties in echocardiography and structural heart disease, serves as the Assistant Director for Cardiac Integration at the NCDI Poverty Network and the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In that role, as part of PEN-Plus, she leads programs for decentralizing and integrating care for people with advanced cardiovascular disease at the rural district hospital level across the Network’s Phase 3 and Phase 4 implementation countries.

Dr. Klassen has had extensive experience carrying out heart failure and echocardiography training related to PEN-Plus implementation in sub-Saharan Africa and has chaired or directed sessions at international conferences related to heart failure care in limited-resource settings. She also manages cardiology fellowships supported by the Center for Integration Science.

In addition, Dr. Klassen serves as a Lecturer in the Program in Global Noncommunicable Disease and Social Change in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Klassen earned her MD at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, in 2011. She completed a residency in internal medicine at McMaster University, followed by an Adult Cardiology fellowship at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Dr. Klassen completed a fellowship in Advanced Echocardiography and Clinical Research with Massachusetts General Hospital in 2019 and a fellowship in Cardiovascular Disease and Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2020. She is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, a Fellow of the American Society of Echocardiography, and an Emerging Leader within the World Heart Federation.

Remy Nkwiro Bitwayiki, MD, MMed

Remy Nkwiro Bitwayiki, MD, MMed, is the Regional Advisor for West Africa for the NCDI Poverty Network and the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also an internal medicine specialist with more than ten years of clinical practice in diverse African healthcare settings, particularly in managing noncommunicable diseases.

As the internal medicine consultant and NCD lead at Partners In Health in Sierra Leone, he has significantly contributed to the implementation of the PEN-Plus project at Koidu Government Hospital. He has also helped the initiation of a bachelor’s program in internal medicine for local health officers.

Dr. Bitwayiki’s previous challenging roles have included supporting Ebola and COVID-19 management with the World Health Organization in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Early in his career, he established the Department of Internal Medicine at Aweil State Hospital in South Sudan, where he focused on quality improvement, the development of clinical protocols, and healthcare provider training.

In addition to his MD, Dr. Bitwayiki holds a master’s degree of medicine in internal medicine from the University of Rwanda. His work is driven by a deep commitment to equity and compassionate care.

Natnael A. Abebe, MD

Natnael A. Abebe, MD, is a Regional Advisor for the NCDI Poverty Network and the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In that role, he focuses particularly on Ethiopia’s and Uganda’s PEN-Plus initiatives.

Dr. Abebe’s previous work centered on decentralizing cancer care, particularly through the development of models to extend palliative care to periurban and rural communities. Additionally, he has been actively involved in the clinical and programmatic management of noncommunicable diseases, and he spearheaded the Ethiopian PEN-Plus initiation project as a medical coordinator.

As a medical oncologist and palliative care specialist, Dr. Abebe has been recognized for his contributions to expanding palliative care in low-income countries. He received the IDEA-Palliative Care Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncologists in 2022 and the International Physician Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine in 2023.

Dr. Abebe completed his medical oncology fellowship at Tata Memorial Hospital in India and pursued Palliative Medicine training at the Cipla Palliative Care & Training Centre in Pune, India, and St. Christopher’s Hospice in London, United Kingdom. He studied leadership at the University of Delaware, where he was also honored as a 2022 Mandela Washington Fellow under the Young African Leaders Initiative.

Marta Patiño Rodriguez, MD

Marta Patiño Rodriguez, MD, is an internal medicine physician who serves as the Associate Director of Education and Training for the NCDI Poverty Network and the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr Patiño has more than 20 years of work experience in Spain with the National Health System and in Sierra Leone with Partners In Health. Through this work she has had extensive involvement in a broad range of activities from clinical practice to clinical education, research, and program implementation across multiple health system environments.

In her role as Clinical Projects Specialist for PIH–Sierra Leone, Dr. Patiño managed several large grants including MIND-TB, a gender-sensitive tuberculosis screening project and PEN-Plus funded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital, she conducted the National Assessment in Emergency Care for Sierra Leone, and led development of data management and evaluation in the Emergency Department at Koidu Government Hospital.

In her role as clinical educator, Dr. Patiño has trained and mentored clinical students throughout her career as well as supervised local and visiting trainees completing their research and implementation projects in Sierra Leone. She supervised the development and implementation of the Advanced Training Program for Emergency Care in conjunction with Chicago University and was part of the training faculty for Non-Communicable Diseases at Koidu Government Hospital.

Most recently, she co-led the development and implementation of a novel Bachelor Degree Program in Internal Medicine for Clinical Officers in Sierra Leone together with the Makeni School of Clinical Sciences. In her current role at PEN-Plus, she continues to build on her prior experience as she steers organizational efforts toward ongoing curriculum development, on-site training, cross-site collaboration and standardization, and cultivation of context-relevant learning resources.