Ada Thapa is a Senior Research Assistant at the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, focusing mainly in the qualitative analysis of the CGM trial.
Ada completed her MPH in Health Policy Analysis and Evaluation with a Global Health certificate from the University of Maryland, College Park. During her MPH program, she interned with Save the Children, US on their USAID-funded Maternal and Child Survival project where she oversaw the qualitative analysis for a key pilot project in Mozambique called “Our First Baby”. Following her graduation, she worked in the Global Mental Health Equity lab at George Washington University as a Research Assistant and performed qualitative analysis for the Gates STAND STRONG project. Ada also worked as Research Associate at Health Foundation Nepal for more than two years on their Non-Communicable Disease project.
Katia Domingues (MPH) is the PEN-Plus Program Manager for the NCDI Poverty Network at the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity. She received her MPH from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health with two certificates in Monitoring & Evaluation of International Programs and Humanitarian Health. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Community Health from Tufts University. In addition to her work with PEN-Plus, Katia is a part-time epidemiologist at a local health department in Massachusetts.
Prior to joining the NCDI Poverty Network, Katia served as a COVID-19 Case Investigator Lead for the Portuguese-speaking division of the Internal Language Line at the CTC, a joint program of PIH and the state of Massachusetts. Simultaneously, she was on the JHU COVID-19 Training Initiative team as a student intern and helped create training modules to be used by local boards of health on pandemic response. She also served in the Peace Corps as a Community Health Services promoter in Chicumbane, Mozambique, and helped train health workers at the district hospital in data collection of infectious diseases. While in Mozambique, she trained Mozambican community-based organizations on grant writing skills and successfully acquired two grants to start a health literacy project and community library initiative in the village she served.
Outside of work, Katia likes to go on walks, travel, drink tea and spend time with her family and friends.
Ramon Ruiz is an Instructional Designer in the Division of Global Health Equity at the Center for Integration Science. He collaborates with experts across the Global Health Delivery Partnership to design, develop, and launch courses for clinicians working at NCD clinics in rural health facilities within low- and lower-middle income countries.
Before joining the NCDI Poverty Network team, Ramon worked at Massachusetts Port Authority, State Street Global Advisors, and Natixis Investment Managers in learning and development, learning management system (LMS) administration, and graphic design. He has a BA in Visual Arts from Brown University.
Leslie Wentworth is a Manager for Health Information Systems and Analytics at Partners in Health (PIH). She earned her MS in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition from the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and a BA in Spanish and Film Studies from Wesleyan University. Prior to joining PIH, Leslie worked as a monitoring and evaluation manager for child health and cervical cancer programs at the Clinton Health Access Initiative. During this time, she collaborated with leaders at the World Health Organization to model and cost the scale up of national cervical cancer screening and treatment programs in low resource settings. Leslie’s background is in program implementation and management, research design, and evaluation, and has a strong interest in strengthening information systems to improve health.
Gina Ferrari joined the team in 2019 as a research fellow after completing a dual Master of Science in Nursing/Master of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests focus on the implementation of training and mentorship programs facilitating behavioral approaches to chronic disease management for clinicians caring for patients in rural areas of low- and lower-middle-income countries (LLMICs). She has a background in diabetes technology research and has spent over 10 years working at diabetes camps for children in the U.S. and abroad. Gina currently practices as a clinician and diabetes educator at a Federally Qualified Health Center in San Diego, California caring for adults with type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes. Gina’s passion for promoting and providing equitable access to high quality diabetes care stems from her own type 1 diabetes diagnosis over 10 years ago.
Dr. Gene Kwan is a cardiologist and global health researcher with expertise in the intersection between these two fields. His primary goal is to push the frontier of global cardiovascular disease epidemiology and health service delivery research through the development, implementation, evaluation, improvement, and dissemination of integrated chronic care programs targeted to overcome specific barriers in rural low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). He leads heart failure and cardiovascular disease initiatives to support the PEN-Plus strategy with the NCDI Poverty Team. This includes training providers in echocardiography, patient management, as well as identifying and eradicating barriers to care faced by our patients.
