Alumni
Brennan Bollman
Brennan Bollman, MD, Class of 2021, focused her primary research attention on the Acute Care and Emergency Referral Systems (ACERS) program in rural Ghana, particularly in helping develop a novel emergency dispatch center for maternal/neonatal emergencies. She is also researching indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: globally with sidHARTe and locally in the Columbia Emergency Department. She serves as a Clinical Mentor for the International Rescue Committee’s Cox’s Bazar COVID-19 response.
Charlotte Roy, MD
Charlotte Roy, MD, Class of 2021, worked on research with the Columbia Center for Global Health Justice and Governance on gender-based violence in Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa with a particular focus on the impact of COVID-19. This includes conducting in-depth interviews with staff at local and international NGOs on the impact of COVID-19 on their work. She is also contributing to research on the indirect health effects of COVID-19 and working with International Rescue Committee as a COVID-19 Clinical Mentor for Chad.
Ben Kaufman
Ben Kaufman, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2020, worked with the WHO Health Sector in the Rohingya Refugee response with the NGO Community Partners International (CPI), to develop EMS systems in the Kutupalong refugee camp. Integrating concepts from the modules Helping Mothers Survive (HMS) and Helping Babies Survive (HBS) with the WHO’s Basic Emergency Care, he conducted trainings for Rohingya Community Health Workers (CHWs) to serve as first-responders. To improve the camp’s neonatal and maternal mortality rates, Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) were integrated into the trainings with the Community Health team and linked to the existing EMS framework in the camps with collaboration through International Rescue Committee and UN Agencies, including IOM.
Dr. Timothy Depp
Dr. Timothy Depp, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2020, collaborated with the IRC to develop QI protocols for non-communicable disease (NCD) management in refugee and humanitarian settings. He also assists MSF on research with diagnostics for evaluating non-malarial febrile illness in field settings. Since 2011, the Columbia University sidHARTe program has partnered with the University of Rwanda, College of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Rwanda Ministry of Health, which, in collaboration with Brown ED, celebrated the second graduating class of Emergency Medicine faculty. Dr. Depp worked in Rwanda at CHUK emergency department supporting resident training, research, and publication and contributed to the residency by teaching residents how to read head CT scans.
Alyssa Green
Alyssa Green, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2019, worked as the Assistant Health Coordinator for the IRC's Emergency Response Team in Cucuta, Colombia on the Venezuelan border. She coordinated and implemented a plan to help Venezuelan refugees access reproductive health care services with the Colombia health care system.
Alyssa spent five weeks in the Central African Republic working with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) analyzing barriers to care and trying to qualify health seeking behaviors. Pulling data from the ongoing surveillance project, she performed a case control study looking specifically at how cost affects health seeking behaviors in the town of Bocaranga.
Shama Patel
Shama Patel, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2019, worked in Rwanda with the masters in emergency medicine residents serving as faculty for resident education. During that time, she led didactics with the residents and medical students, conducted bedside teaching and assisted with research projects. During her fellowship, Shama responded to Hurricane Maria by deploying with New York Presbyterian providing acute care to the population devasted by the hurricane.
Shama also worked with the Federal Ministry of Health in Ethiopia via the WHO Basic Emergency Care course training of trainer’s course as well as led the development and implementation of the disaster management team training. Shama continues to work with the Ethiopian government providing technical assistance to the Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Directorate.
Hayes Wong, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2018
During Fellowship: Dr. Wong worked in Uganda with the International Rescue Committee to assess the quality of healthcare at health facilities that served South Sudanese refugees. Following this assessment, she worked with health staff on the ground to set up, test, and implement a quality improvement system. She also worked in Rwanda with sidHARTe – Strengthening Emergency Systems to train front line providers on acute care through 5-day training courses. After fellowship Dr. Wong has been working with MSF in South Sudan and DRC.
Tsion Firew, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2017
During Fellowship: Dr. Firew worked in the Upper East Region of Ghana to conduct facility Needs Assessment sidHARTe - Strengthening Emergency Systems ESRAT. Using this experience, she also worked for the Emergency and Critical Care directorate of Federal Ministry of Health in Ethiopia where she trained data collectors and analyzed assessment results. She also served as the clinical team lead in Mosul, Iraq for the Trauma Stabilization Point operated by NYCMedics. She conducted this work during the battle for Mosul and her work included rapid triage of patients, hemorrhage control, airway management, and critical life-saving interventions. Dr. Firew also worked in the WHO headquarters in Geneva under the WHO’s emergency, trauma, and acute care program.
After Fellowship: Dr. Firew continued to stay on as an attending emergency physician in our CU ED and as an advisor to the Ministry of Health for the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Dr Firew played a vital role in advocating for the proposal of the resolution on emergency care and co-authored the resolution with colleagues at the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and garnered support from member states to lead the adoption of the resolution at the World Health Assembly.
Jonathon Lee, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2017
During Fellowship: Dr. Lee worked with worked in Ghana under the Ghana Health Service conducting sidHARTe - Strengthening Emergency Systems’ Emergency Services Resource Assessment Tool (ESRAT) assessments of emergency services in health facilities. During his MPH practicum he worked in Cairo at the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) on the development of the NCD emergency health kit, a supply of medications and equipment meant to provide for the NCD healthcare needs of 10,000 people over 3 months in emergency settings. Later he returned to work for the WHO and served in the Mosul Trauma Referral Coordination Cell as a pre-hospital referral cooridnator during the Battle for Mosul in Northern Iraq.
After Fellowship: Dr. Lee has worked in emergency contexts both internationally and nationally with various organizations including World Health Organization and Medecins Sans Frontieres. Jonathan was part of an interdisciplinary team of nurses, mid-level providers, and physicians that were deployed to Puerto Rico as part NewYork-Presbyterian’s disaster response team in affiliation with New York Greater Hospital Association and the United States Health and Human Services. His most recent work has been as a medical doctor at a diphtheria treatment center in Bangladesh in response to the outbreak amidst the Rohingya refugee crisis.
Tim Tan, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2017
During Fellowship: Tim's first fieldwork experience was with sidHARTe in Rwanda, where he assisted with curriculum development. His involvement with sidHARTe continued after fellowship with projects including collecting and analyzing data for the monitoring and evaluation process for an emergency medicine residency program in Rwanda, developing clinical guidelines and technical documents for the Rwandan Ministry of Health to support the establishment of emergency medicine, and conducting surveys of emergency medicine capacity throughout the Rwandan district hospital system. Tim also became involved in disaster response work as a CUMC IEM fellow, first as a volunteer physician with NYC Medics responding to the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in The Philippines.
After Fellowship: Tim served as the Medical Director for NYC Medics, and helped direct disaster responses in Vanuatu after Cyclone Pam, and Nepal after the 2015 earthquake. Through NYC Medics, Tim also developed and implemented a pre-hospital trauma program in Mosul, Iraq, in response to the 2017 conflict between coalition forces and ISIS. This program, in partnership with the WHO and Iraqi Ministry of Health, involved setting up mobile trauma stabilization points near the frontlines of the conflict to receive and stabilize trauma patients, and also establishing a referral system to coordinate the transfer of patients between numerous field hospitals operated by NGOs such as MSF, Emergency, Samaritan's Purse, and ICRC. Tim is currently working as an emergency physician at NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens, where he is the Director of Clinical Operations and Emergency Management.
Makini Chisolm-Straker, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2015
During Fellowship: Dr. Chisolm-Straker taught and collaborated on curricular development for sidHARTe and Human Resources for Health program, directed by the Rwandan Ministry of Health, to train general practitioners of district hospitals in emergency medicine. Dr. Chisolm-Straker worked on "Measuring Separation in Emergencies," a project aimed at strengthening emergency response programming for unaccompanied and separated children Dr. Chisolm-Straker also worked in Bo Town, Sierra Leone with the IRC as an Ebola-Unit Case Management Transition Coordinator and in El Salvador with co-fellow Dr. Eric Cioé-Peña, Class of 2015, on developing a trauma care system.
After Fellowship: Dr. Chisolm-Straker, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Mount Sinai NY and co-founder of HEAL Trafficking, helped design and analyze a qualitative study to examine the barriers and facilitators to behavior change after education in a major hospital in San Salvador. In 2017 Dr. Chisolm-Straker served in Iraq with NYC Medics as a physician at mobile Trauma Stabilization Points for combatants and civilians injured during conflict. Dr. Chisolm-Straker was a researcher and consultant for a DFID-funded study, "Effective Approaches to End Worst Forms of Child Labor,” which examined how supply and demand issues contribute to child labor in Ethiopia, Central African Republic, and Democratic Republic of Congo. Dr. Chisolm-Straker was a headlining speaker at the American Public Health Association 2019 Annual Meeting and Expo.
Craig Spencer, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2013
During Fellowship: Dr. Spencer conducted a sidHARTe - Strengthening Emergency Systems Needs Assessment in Rwanda; worked on measuring mortality and maternal health in Burundi with co-fellow Dr. Dziwe Ntabe, Class of 2013; co-founded Village Health Works (VHW); worked on access to legal documentation in Indonesia; and addressed child separation in emergencies in D.R. Congo and South Sudan. Through a CU Global EM collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/Doctors Without Borders) he worked for a month in Guinea during the Ebola outbreak immediately after fellowship.
After fellowship Dr. Spencer continued to stay on as an attending emergency physician in our CU ED and worked as a physician onboard the Aquarius, a medical search and rescue vessel operated by MSF in the Mediterranean. In 2018 he chaired a discussion group on mortality at the 'International Conference on Border Deaths and Migration Policies’ in Amsterdam. Craig is also studying human rights violations and mortality amongst migrants and refugees in the Sahel. He collaborated with colleagues at the Amahoro Health Network in Burundi, and together they presented an abstract at the Consortium for Universities in Global Health Meeting. Dr. Spencer has been active in social media regarding the handling of the COVID-19 response.
Mary Choi, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2011
During Fellowship: Dr. Choi helped coordinate an ultrasound-training program in Ghana, deployed to the Haiti earthquake with IMC, and coordinated a childhood mortality survey in Sierra Leone. After her fellowship, Dr. Choi worked as an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Columbia University. She also served as a Mortality Survey Specialist at IRC where she coordinated a childhood mortality survey in South Sudan with the Malaria Consortium and Save the Children.
After Fellowship: Dr. Choi worked as an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Columbia University and served as Community Case Management Survey Specialist at the IRC. There she led a joint childhood mortality survey with Save the Children. She also developed and led a child mortality survey in Sierra Leone with IRC and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). She was subsequently selected for the prestigious CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service. She served as a medical officer with the CDC Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion and CDC Ebola response. Dr. Choi currently serves as a medical officer for Viral Special Pathogens Branch within CDC’s Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology and has been active in both Ebola response and research.
Trina Helderman, Global EM Fellow, Class of 2009
During Fellowship: During her fellowship, Dr. Helderman pursued a variety of opportunities to help determine what type of work in global health was most in-line with her strengths and goals. Dr. Helderman participated in training of health care workers in ACLS in India and Trauma Care in the Dominican Republic. Dr. Helderman was also able to carry out assessments including a health facility assessment as part of the sidHARTe Project in Ghana and a post-disaster assessment following a hurricane in the Dominican Republic. The most foundational experience for Trina was a three-month deployment with the International Rescue Committee to Sudan (now South Sudan) to support their primary health care project as well as a cholera response. This experience and the skills and knowledge learned outside the classroom help set the foundation for Trina’s future work.
After Fellowship: Dr. Helderman worked with, led, or supported medical teams responding to sudden-onset disasters including the 2010 Haiti earthquake (IMC), the 2015 Nepal earthquake (Medair), and the Mosul Offensive in Iraq (Medair). She has led outbreak responses for kala-azar, cholera, measles, meningitis, and Hepatitis E in the complex humanitarian emergency in South Sudan (Medair); was Medical Coordinator with oversight for the Ebola Treatment Center during the outbreak in Sierra Leone (Medair); and supported an emergency malaria project in northern Kenya (Mentor Initiative). Previously a Senior Health and Nutrition Advisor at Medair, Dr. Helderman provided senior level technical support to Medair’s health and nutrition programs in DRC, deployed and supported new onset emergency responses, and has supported the Medair Ebola Response in DRC both remotely and on the ground. For the past 3 years, Dr. Helderman has been on the Global Health Cluster Strategic Advisory group supporting global initiatives to improve health responses in emergencies and disasters.