Key Staff

Lynn Freedman, Director

Lynn P. Freedman is director of the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) program and professor of clinical population and family health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Before joining the faculty at Columbia University in 1990, she worked as a practicing attorney in New York City. As director of the Law & Policy Project at Columbia´s Mailman School of Public Health since 1997, Lynn has been a leading figure in the field of health and human rights, working worldwide with women´s groups, health groups, and human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Lynn has published widely on issues of maternal mortality and on health and human rights, with a particular focus on gender and women´s health. She received a graduate law degree (JD) from Harvard University, a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Columbia University, and a bachelor´s degree (BA) from Yale University.

Helen de Pinho, Associate Director

Dr. Helen de Pinho is associate director of AMDD and an assistant professor of clinical population and family health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Helen has extensive experience in health systems and capacity development as a health services manager for reproductive and primary health care in rural and urban South Africa. At the University of Cape Town, she was a senior lecturer and director of the Oliver Tambo Fellowship program, which focused on strengthening management and leadership of senior health service managers to support the transformation of health systems in South Africa’s new democracy. She also engaged in research and policy development to strengthen women’s health services. Immediately prior to joining AMDD, Helen worked as a senior policy adviser to the U.N. Millennium Project Task Force on Child Health and Maternal Health, with a focus on health systems and human resources.

Helen did her medical training (MBBCh) at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. She specialized in Public Health (FCCH (SA)) and also completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) focused on systems thinking and management education at the University of Cape Town.

Koye Oyerinde, Assistant Clinical Professor

Dr. Koyejo Oyerinde, joined AMDD and the Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University as an assistant clinical professor in July of 2009. He implements AMDD’s program strategies on maternal and newborn health worldwide.  Prior to joining AMDD, Koye was an independent public health consultant. He led several public health survey teams on behalf of NGOs and UN agencies in Lesotho, Namibia, Somalia, and Sierra Leone. His work included the development of research protocols and instruments, training field workers, and supervising field activities.

Koye received basic medical training in Nigeria and underwent graduate studies in general public health and epidemiology in Nigeria and South Africa. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a member of their section on international health.

Patricia E. Bailey, Senior Technical Advisor

Dr. Patricia Bailey has been a senior technical advisor at AMDD since its inception in 1999.  She is also a senior scientist at Family Health International and adjunct associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health.  Patricia has played a key role in building the research systems and processes of the EmONC Needs Assessments, a component of which has been the revision and global dissemination of the EmOC indicators for monitoring the availability, utilization, and quality of obstetric services.   Her interest in quality improvement has led to capacity-building in different techniques, such as criteria-based audits to assess clinical treatment of complications, management issues, and human rights in a clinical setting.  She is an expert in both quantitative and qualitative research methods, tailoring methodologies, and providing technical support to countries on study design, sampling, questionnaire development, data management systems and analysis, using both complex statistical techniques and text analysis.  Her collaborations with the World Health Organization and other UN agencies focus on individual and multi-country analyses of maternal mortality and morbidity, using data for action, and assisting governments to sequence interventions to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes. 

Dr. Bailey has published extensively on maternal and newborn health issues.  She earned her Doctorate in Public Health (DrPH) in maternal and child health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Technical Staff (in alphabetical order)

 

Ihotu Jennifer Ali, Needs Assessment Project Coordinator

Ihotu Jennifer Ali joined AMDD in 2011 as Project Coordinator for the National Needs Assessments for Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care, supporting an international team of consultants to build in-country data management capacity to improve maternal and newborn health. Ihotu previously managed health and education programs with community-based nonprofits serving African and Caribbean immigrants and refugees in Minneapolis, New York City, and in Rabat, Morocco. She has conducted research with the Clinton Foundation’s Haiti Team, the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, Save the Children, the Friends Women’s Association in Burundi, and co-led an assessment of child protection and education with UNICEF and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Ihotu also worked for the President Barack Obama campaign and the office of a U.S. Congressman as a Center for Progressive Leadership Fellow.

Ihotu has published and presented research in community health and policy in Africa and the African Diaspora, and is a Ron Brown Scholar and a member of the Diaspora African Women’s Association. She completed a B.A. in International Studies and Political Science from Macalester College and an M.P.H. in Forced Migration and Health at Columbia University. 

 

Grace Kodindo, Technical Adviser

Dr. Grace Kodindo collaborates with AMDD in her work as the medical and advocacy advisor to AMDD’s sister program, the RAISE Initiative. She worked with AMDD on the implementation of emergency obstetric care in Mali and Rwanda. Her recent work at RAISE focuses on comprehensive reproductive health care for refugees and internally displaced persons.  She practiced general medicine and obstetrics/gynecology in her native Chad for thirty years. She also taught in nursing and midwifery schools and served on the University of N’djamena’s Faculty of Medicine. Grace served as a reproductive health consultant for the WHO, UNICEF, and UNFPA country offices in Chad.  Grace has been honored many times. In May 2009, the Danish Government awarded the MDG 3 torch to Grace for her worldwide promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment. In 2000, she won the FIGO/Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Distinguished Community Service Award for Emergency Obstetric Care.  Grace has also been featured in two award-winning BBC documentaries. The 2005 Dead Mums Don’t Cry followed her work as the head of the primary maternity hospital in Chad. In 2009, Grace Under Fire accompanied her as she investigated the abysmal state of reproductive health services in war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Grace holds a medical degree from the Université de Montreal in Canada and a specialization in obstetrics and gynecology from Khartoum University. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

 

Therese McGinn, Technical Adviser

Dr. Therese McGinn is the director of the RAISE Initiative, AMDD’s sister program. In the past, she served as deputy director of AMDD and principal investigator of the monitoring and evaluation program of the Reproductive Health Response in Conflict Consortium.  During her more than 25 years in public health, Therese has concentrated on using sound data collection and analysis to improve reproductive health services so that men and women can make choices about their sexual and reproductive lives. Since the mid-1990s, she has focused on reproductive health in conflict-affected populations, primarily in Africa but also in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.

Therese received a DrPH from Columbia University, with a dissertation on fertility desires and behavior of women in post-conflict Rwanda, and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Michigan. She is an associate professor of clinical population and family health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

  

Marta Schaaf, Senior Program Officer

Marta Schaaf is a Senior Program Officer, focusing on the “Accountability on the Frontlines” project. In this role, she develops program research and implementation to promote accountability for maternal and other health programs.  Through this project, AMDD partners with governmental, academic, and non-governmental agencies to study and devise ways of ensuring that women have access to the quality care that their governments have committed to provide. 

Marta comes to AMDD having worked in health and human rights for over 10 years. Most recently, she managed pediatric HIV and drug supply chain programs for the Clinton Foundation in West Africa.  She has also worked on access to health care, minority health, and health systems for the World Lung Foundation, HealthRight, the Open Society Foundation, and the World Health Organization.  Marta has a Masters in International Affairs and a Masters in Public Health from Columbia University.   

 

Saroj Sedalia, Research Officer

Ms. Saroj Sedalia joined AMDD in 2011 and is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In her work with AMDD, she is collaborating with the BRAC Health Program to document, gather evidence around, synthesize and communicate key lessons from their ongoing work in maternal and neonatal health in urban slums. Prior to joining AMDD Ms. Sedalia worked with the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) in their New Delhi Asia Regional Office. Her work there focused on gender, violence against women, and HIV. She also worked in domestic intimate partner violence prevention in the US and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica.

Ms. Sedalia holds a Master in Public Health from the Mailman School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Spanish from the Ohio State University. 

 

Technical Staff Outside of New York

Staffan Bergström

Dr. Staffan Bergström has been a Senior Adviser to the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) program since 2006. He has spent more than 35 years devoted to maternal and newborn health in impoverished countries. He was director of the department of obstetrics, Maputo Central Hospital, Mozambique in the 1980´s. Since 1977, he has supervised 33 candidates to a PhD degree, the vast majority of whom were in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Over the last 20 years he has been involved in the crisis of human resources for maternal and newborn survival with emphasis on task-shifting of comprehensive emergency obstetric care to "non-physician clinicians".  Staffan was presented the Distinguished Service Award at the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) Congress in 2009.

Staffan’s scientific activities have been documented in a total of 448 publications: 240 scientific original publications, 64 abstracts from congresses, 28 books, and 116 overview articles. In 1992 he was nominated professor of international health at the University of Oslo. In this same year, he was offered the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Oslo. In 1996 he was nominated for the first chair in Sweden of "Women´s Reproductive Health" at the University of Linköping and also nominated Professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. He presently holds the latter chair (since May 1996) at the Division of Global Health (IHCAR) at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

Cherrie Evans

Dr. Cherrie Evans is a consultant for AMDD, and her main focus has been evaluating the efficacy of strategies to promote maternal survival in developing countries, in particular the provision of EmONC by those other than obstetric specialists. Cherrie is currently working with AMDD to assist in the design of a study assessing the quality of obstetric care as part of the Health System Strengthening for Equity initiative.  Cherrie has practiced as a board certified midwife in the US in a variety of clinical settings, some of which have included training of midwifery and medical students. Her interest in public health began in 2002 when she coordinated an expansion of a prenatal clinic for undocumented immigrants in Frederick, Maryland.

Cherrie received her Master’s of Science in Nurse-Midwifery from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993. In 2008, she received her Doctorate in Public Health (DrPH) from Boston University and has a dual affiliate faculty appointment in the Department of Community and Family Health and the Department of Global Health at the University of South Florida.

Judith Fortney

Dr. Judith A. Fortney is a senior technical advisor to the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) Program, and has worked with AMDD since its inception in 1999.  Judith has made significant contributions to the research field of reproductive health, and has been actively involved in this research since 1974. She worked for Family Health International in North Carolina for 25 years where she was involved in research and writing surrounding maternal mortality and contraceptive epidemiology. She conducted the first RAMOS (Reproductive Age Mortality Survey) Study in Egypt and Indonesia in the early 1980s and has consulted for various U.N. agencies and NGOs. She also worked for the World Health Organization in Geneva where she developed strategies for their Safe Motherhood program, and was a long time member of the WHO contraceptive epidemiology committee and maternal mortality research committee. She has published widely in the field of reproductive health, including such topics as: contraceptive epidemiology, maternal mortality, and sexually transmitted infections.

She received a PhD in demography from Duke University, a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor’s degree from the London School of Economics. She is an instructor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and an adjunct professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina.

Elizabeth Jackson

Dr. Elizabeth Jackson began her work with AMDD in 2009, focusing on the design, implementation, and evaluation of locally appropriate and sustainable referral strategies to increase women's access to emergency obstetric care in hard to reach areas. Elizabeth's work in emergency referral implementation research is in partnership with the Ghana School of Public Health and the Ghana Health Service. She is also working with the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania to evaluate the impact of a new, paid community-health worker cadre on maternal, newborn, and child mortality.  Elizabeth is also involved in other areas of reproductive health research, including family planning, female genital cutting, and HIV/AIDS prevention. Through the Population Council, in collaboration with the Navrongo Health Research Centre in northern Ghana, Elizabeth evaluated the fertility impact of a community-based health and family planning program and assessed the effect of an intervention to reduce the practice of female genital cutting in northern Ghana. As a scientist with Family Health International, she designed an evaluation of a community-based distribution program for injectable contraceptives in Malawi.

Elizabeth received a Master of Science in Health (MSH) in International Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation research focused on identifying risk factors for HIV infection among vulnerable youth in South Africa using both qualitative and quantitative research methods.  She is an assistant professor in the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health.

Emily Keyes

Emily Keyes has provided technical assistance to AMDD projects in Mozambique, Angola, Guyana, and Ethiopia. Her expertise is in the areas of quantitative analyses, developing data collection forms, establishing protocols for field-work, data entry and data management, developing and implementing quality assurance plans, and training data collectors for field work.  Emily worked for more than 10 years as a project manager with community-based social service programs in the U.S. in the areas of affordable housing, energy efficiency, and green building. She has worked at Family Health International since 2007. At FHI, her work has focused on health services research in the areas of family planning service delivery, HIV prevention, and maternal mortality reduction.

Emily holds a civil engineering degree from Villanova University and a Master of Science (MS) in Public Health from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Margaret Kruk

Dr. Margaret Kruk works as a Technical Advisor to AMDD. She completed a family medicine residency and initially practiced family and emergency medicine in remote northern Ontario, Canada. She then worked as the Policy Advisor for Health at the Millennium Project, an Advisory body to the UN Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals. At the Millennium Project, Margaret coordinated the work of expert Task Forces on HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria, Access to Essential Medicines, and Maternal and Child Health and assisted Ministries of Health in several low-income countries with planning for health system scale-up. Other prior experience includes working as engagement manager with the New York office of McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm, and as acting country manager with Medecins sans Frontieres in Lebanon. She has also consulted with the WHO, the World Bank, and the United Nations.

Margaret’s research focus is in quantitative analysis of patient and provider preferences and health systems performance in low-income and post-conflict countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Specific areas of research include: financing and utilization of maternal health services, use of stated preference methods in health care (discrete choice experiments), and health system performance evaluation in sub-Saharan African and other low-income regions.  Margaret received a medical degree from McMaster University and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Harvard University. She is an Assistant Professor in Health Policy and Management at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and was previously an Assistant Professor in Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Barbara Kwast

Dr. Kwast has served as a senior advisor to the AMDD Program since 1999. She brings with her 45 years of professional experience as a specialist in Maternal and Child Health and Midwifery education, and as an epidemiologist focused on implementation, monitoring and evaluation of maternal mortality and morbidity programs worldwide.  She has been given a number of awards and honors: the FRCOG from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in London (2002), the Community Service Award from the Ethiopian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Ethiopia (2007), a Knighthood of the Order of Orange Nassau in the Netherlands (2004), and was nominated for the Helping Hollander Award (2009). A film was broadcast in November 2009 about her work with the Hamlin College of Midwives and the Hamlin Fistula Hospital in the Dutch TV program called, The Netherlands Helps.  She assisted in the development of midwifery education and practice both in Malawi and Nigeria. She was a lecturer in community obstetrics at the Medical Faculty of the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, working for the Department of International Co-operation of the Netherlands and the respective Governments. She worked as a scientist with the Department of Family Health at the WHO, participating in the development of the Global Safe Motherhood Initiative and as a member of the Interregional Technical Support Team of UNFPA to assist with the formulation of MCH/FP country programs. She also worked with USAID’s Mother Care Project and since then has worked as an international consultant in reproductive health and safe motherhood, participating in project development, implementation, and evaluation of emergency obstetric care for the reduction of maternal mortality and morbidity in Africa and Asia.

Barbara has published over 66 articles on maternal health and maternal mortality/morbidity and has a dedicated professional history of commitment to maternal health.  In addition to diplomas in nursing, midwifery, midwifery education, family planning, and tropical medicine, she earned a master’s degree in community health at the School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool and a PhD degree in epidemiology at the University of Wales College of Medicine.

Dileep Mavalankar

Dr. Mavalankar is a senior management adviser to AMDD. His areas of expertise include: management of maternal health programs and health systems improvement, quality of care, reproductive healthcare, and management of services.  Dileep has a long history of devotion to the field of maternal health. He worked as a post doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Health (NIH). He has consulted to several international organizations, including: the WHO, UNICEF, CARE, Aga Khan Foundation, UNDP/World Bank, and the government of India's health and family welfare departments and state governments. He has been a member of several program and scientific advisory committees, including: GAVI Switzerland, Mother Care project, NIHFW, IIPS, IIHMR, IMMPAC, the government of India, and the planning commission of India. He was appointed by the Prime Minister to the Missions Steering Group of the National Rural Health Mission constituted by the Government of India.

He has delivered lectures at several health and management institutes and has published several articles in professional journals, book chapters, and working papers. He has developed courses on service and hospital management and teaches a course on public management. Dileep’s current work includes: management of maternal health programs, monitoring the quality of health services, and research revolving around the management capacity for health.  Dileep completed a Doctorate of Public Health degree from the Johns Hopkins University.

Colin McCord

Dr. Colin McCord is a technical advisor to AMDD. He served on the faculty at Columbia University and was director of cardiac surgery at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York until 1971. From 1971 to 1987 he worked full time as a surgeon and director of health programs in Bangladesh, India, and Mozambique, much of this time in rural districts. He was the director of surgery at the Central Hospital in Maputo, Mozambique from 1983 to 1987. He returned to New York in 1987 and rejoined the faculty at Columbia, as associate professor of surgery, associate director of surgery at Harlem Hospital and director of the Harlem Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.

In 1998, he retired from Columbia and returned to India as a surgeon and general physician at the hospital of the Comprehensive Rural Health Project in Jamkhed, Maharashtra. In 2002 and 2003 he was an assistant commissioner in the New York City Department of Health. Since 2004 he has been semi-retired, but returns frequently to Africa to work with surgical programs.  He received his medical degree from Columbia University and trained in both general and thoracic surgery at the Columbia Division of Bellevue Hospital in New York City.

Lisa Moreau

Ms. Lisa Moreau has worked with AMDD since late 2008 in developing the Data Collectors Training (DCT): Trainer’s Guide, which is part of the Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) Needs Assessment program. She has also played a role in reviewing and editing other source documents related to the EmONC Needs Assessment.  She has worked as a trainer/facilitator and an instructional design consultant for over 20 years for a variety of national and international public health organizations. Ms. Moreau’s client organizations include FHI, Ipas, IntraHealth International, and CDC. Recent and past publications and curriculum development projects include: (links provided) Ipas’ Medical Abortion Study Guide and Medical Abortion Training Program; FHI’s Family Life Education: Teaching Adults to Communicate with Youth from a Christian Perspective; FHI’s VCT Toolkit: Skills Training Curriculum Facilitator's Guide; and CDC’s Introduction to STD Intervention.

Ms. Moreau holds a Master in Non-Profit Management from Regis University in Colorado and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Isabelle Moreira

Dr. Moreira is an experienced advisor in reproductive health, with extensive experience in maternal health, particularly EmONC, family planning, adolescents sexual and reproductive health, reproductive health commodity security, and HIV/AIDS at national and regional level. She has experience with field work in a remote area in Senegal and training of medical students, nurse midwives, and other health providers when she was working at the university level and as a consultant for CEFOREP (Centre de Recherche et de Formation en Santé de la Reproduction). She worked as an international consultant for UNFPA Western and Central Africa Country Support Team, AWARE/RH (USAID regional project) for reproductive health program planning and evaluations in Senegal, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, and the Ivory Coast.  Isabelle received a Global Health leadership Award from the Canadian Global Health Research Initiative. In addition, she has been involved on several research and studies in the area of reproductive health. She has worked closely with the Ministry of Health of several African countries, facilitating the development of strategic documents, such as: National Road Maps for Maternal and Newborn Mortality Reduction, Obstetric Fistula Strategic Plan, Reproductive Health Commodity Security Plan, and Reproductive Health Politics Norms and Protocols.

Obstetric-Gynecologist since 1999, and public health graduated in 2006, Dr. Isabelle Moreira has worked as a technical advisor for AMDD since 2009, giving technical support to several developing countries (Haiti, Madagascar, Burkina Faso) to scale up Emergency Obstetric care for maternal and newborn mortality reduction.

Aline Mukundwa

Aline Mukundwa is a technical advisor to AMDD. She has a long history of work in reproductive health that has taken her to many different countries in Africa, Europe, and the US. She worked for two USAID funded international non-governmental organizations, PRIME II and EGPAF. She worked for the government of Rwanda as a technical advisor to the reproductive health division and as director of maternal and child health. In 2008 she joined the World Health Organization as a Program Administrator. Aline has experience as a freelance consultant in areas of reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, gender, and sexual and reproductive health rights. As a consultant, she has worked for UNICEF Rwanda, FEMNET Nairobi, Rwanda TracPlus, and VOXIVA.

In addition to her work, Aline was an appointed medical focal point on the national forum fighting against child sexual abuse and gender based violence, member of the Rwanda Medical Association, and a visiting lecturer at the Kigali Institute of Health.  Aline holds a Masters in Gynecology and Obstetrics and is close to completing an MPH.

Kate Ramsey

Kate Ramsey joined AMDD in 2009 and is based at the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In her work with AMDD, she is developing the collaborative partnership with IHI and contributing to research on strengthening health systems to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity.  Prior to joining AMDD, she worked for UNFPA as the global coordinator of the Campaign to End Fistula providing technical support in the design and implementation of maternal health programs, coordinating the activities of the Campaign within UNFPA, and building international partnerships. During her time at UNFPA, the Campaign grew from 12 to more than 45 countries in Africa and Asia. She also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jordan and an AmeriCorps Volunteer in rural United States.

She received a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Columbia University in 2003 and a bachelor’s (BA) in International Studies from American University in 1996.

Geetha Rana

Dr. Geetha Rana is a technical advisor at AMDD who works to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality in India and South Asia. Dr. Rana has a long history of dedication to the field of maternal and newborn health and has used her experience as an obstetrician/gynecologist to provide technical expertise to a wide variety of organizations.  As an obstetrician, Geetha provided health services to women in Nepal for thirteen years. During this time, she was involved in training post-graduate students in obstetrics and gynecology, as well as general practice. Her experience in development work involves providing technical expertise to several organizations, in particular UNICEF Nepal and DFID- Nepal and Bangladesh. At UNICEF she managed the two arms of UNICEF’s Safe Motherhood Program, the Women’s Right to Life and Health Project, and the Community Based Integrated Mother and Child Care Project. Since 2008, she has been based in Delhi working with AMDD and the National Health Systems Resource Centre.

Geetha has published an array of articles including such topics as: emergency obstetric care in Nepal, midwifery care, and perinatal mortality.