Director:
Stephen Berman, MD, FAAP, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health and holds an endowed chair in Academic General Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Dr. Berman has been honored for his community service and medical activities by local, state, national and international organizations and is a past President of the American Academy of Pediatrics. A practicing primary care pediatrician, he is a leader in international health, child advocacy, child health policy, clinical and outcomes research, and pediatric education.
An effective child advocate, Dr. Berman helped draft six child health bills enacted by his state legislature. These laws provide health insurance to low-income children, require seat belt use, and mandate immunizations and preventive care in insurance plans. As Director of the State Medically Indigent Program, he was the principal architect of the first federal disproportionate share payment to Colorado as well as the Colorado Child Health Plan, which became Colorado's title XXI federally supported state child health insurance program. Dr. Berman has also helped in the development of several successful community service projects including:
- The Reach Out project has increased the participation of private practice physicians in programs that serve low-income underserved children,
- The Mile High Child Care Healthy Beginnings project provides medical services to children enrolled in subsidized Denver child care centers,
- The Colorado Bright Beginnings statewide project provides volunteer home visits for families of newborns, and
- The Language Power program promotes language development during the second year of life.
He was the principal investigator for a CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) grant that created the Colorado Immunization Information System (CIIS) that has become the statewide immunization registry. Subsequent grants that he obtained funded a real-time bidirectional HL7 messaging between EMRs and CIIS. Colorado is only the second state to accomplish this landmark task.An active clinical and outcomes researcher, Dr. Berman has received support for his research from the World Health Organization (WHO), multiple federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Agency of Health Care Research and Quality and several national and local foundations. Dr. Berman has served as special advisor to WHO and the Pan American Health Organization and consultant to many countries throughout the world. The program for managing acute respiratory infections that he helped design for WHO, has been implemented in more than 80 developing countries. He has also developed a disaster course for pediatricians in developing countries in collaboration with the Amercian Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization.
Well known for his contributions to pediatric education, Dr. Berman has authored four editions of his pediatric textbook entitled Pediatric Decision Making, and has published over 100 peer reviewed research articles and many textbook chapters related to common pediatric clinical problems, such as acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, and immunizations. He has also published a book on child advocacy and health policy entitled Getting it Right for Children: Stories of Pediatric Care and Advocacy.
Dr. Berman is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed his pediatric training at the University of Colorado.
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Program Manager:
N Michelle Shiver, BSE - Colorado School of Public Health
For further information about the Center for Global Health, or to receive announcements about local global health activities, please send an email to Michelle Shiver at Michelle.Shiver@ucdenver.edu.
Ms. Shiver is the Program Manager of the Center for Global Health. Prior to this role, she served as program manager for the Prescription for Health National Program Office with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and as Assistant Director of Medical Student Admissions at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. She holds a Baccalaureate of Science in Business Education from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. She has sixteen years of experience in medical education, with eleven of those years in medical student admissions. Her past work has focused on human resources/relations, fiscal management, admissions/interviewing/selection processes, marketing, recruiting, and program management.
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Senior Investigator:
Edwin J Asturias, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Dr. Asturias graduated as a medical doctor from the San Carlos University in Guatemala in 1989 and was board certified in pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in 1995. Trained in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, he has been working in the area of vaccine research and policy in Guatemala and the Latin American region since 1998. Through the conduction of epidemiological studies and the inquiry into efficacy and safety issues of vaccines against poliomyelitis, pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, pneumococcus and E. coli, the Center for Health Studies under his direction has provided answers to important implementation questions, especially for resource poor countries in Central and Latin America.
Dr. Asturias has served on the Guatemalan National Committee for Immunization Practices, the Poliovirus Contention Commission, and advisory groups for the World Health Organization, including the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety. He is the technical coordinator of the Immunization Group of the Mesoamerican Health Initiative, and a member of the Committee of Vaccines of the Latin American Society of Pediatric Infectious Diseases.
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Global Health Curriculum Director:
Karen E Gieseker, PhD, MS, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Dr. Gieseker is an Infectious Disease Epidemiologist with county, state, national and international public health experience. She received her PhD in Analytical Health Sciences - Epidemiology from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and worked as an epidemiologist at Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora, CO, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Stop Transmission of Polio project in Tanzania, the Polio Eradication Branch, National Immunization Program, CDC, and the Division of International Health, Coordinating Center for Global Health at CDC. She loves to teach and has served as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Health at Georgia State University, faculty for the Kenya Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program (FELTP) in Nairobi, Kenya and as course organizer and faculty for the Regional Emerging Diseases Intervention (REDI) Centre Field Epidemiology Training Course in Singapore.
She has been involved with both US and international outbreak investigations including: Cyclospora cayetanensis in raspberries, E coli O157:H7 from hamburger, Salmonella Newport from salsa and Aflatoxin from maize. Additionally, she has worked with the acute flaccid paralysis surveillance system in Pakistan, reviewed traffic injury surveillance in Kenya, analyzed diarrheal illness surveillance in Singapore and worked on a sustainability study to decrease maternal mortality in North Western Tanzania. This past year Dr. Gieseker managed influenza surveillance for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and she is currently teaching both here in Colorado and in Georgia as well as working with the state and local health departments. Her areas of scholarship include global health, infectious disease epidemiology, community health, data driven decision making, outbreak investigations, maternal child health and food safety and security.
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Co-Directors, Maternal and Child Health Initiative
Susan Niermeyer, MD, MPH, FAAP, Professor of Pediatrics, Section of Neonatology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health.
Susan practices and teaches clinical neonatology at Children’s Hospital Colorado, University Hospital, and community hospital nurseries in the Denver area. In 2009 she completed a Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in epidemiology from the Colorado School of Public Health. Susan’s clinical and educational areas of emphasis include neonatal resuscitation and cardiopulmonary physiology in infancy. She has served as co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Neonatal Resuscitation Program Steering Committee and is currently editor for Helping Babies Breathe, the AAP global educational program for neonatal resuscitation in resource-limited settings. Her research interests center on adaptation in the neonatal period, with a focus on cardiopulmonary adaptation and low birth weight at high altitude. High-altitude research has included study of infant oxygenation in Lhasa, Tibet, studies of infant birth weight and cardiopulmonary adaptation in La Paz, Bolivia, studies of pulmonary hypertension and cardiopathies in Peruvian children, and analysis of the relationship of maternal smoking and birth weight at high altitude in Colorado. Underlying her interest in neonatal resuscitation and high-altitude physiology in infants and children is a strong commitment to the health of children around the world, including those in isolated and less-developed regions. This is reflected in her continuing role with the American Academy of Pediatrics to help disseminate the Neonatal Resuscitation Program and Helping Babies Breathe wherever babies are born.
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Eric A F Simoes, MB, BS, DCH, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, Section of Pediatric Infectious Disease at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health.
Dr. Simoes carried out many of the studies that provide the scientific foundation for the WHO Integrated Case Management of Childhood Illness. Over the past twenty years, he has successfully collaborated with researchers throughout the world as well a in Colorado on respiratory infections in premature infants. He has conducted numerous collaborative studies on the epidemiology, prevention and treatment and pathogenesis of respiratory infections (both viral and bacterial) in India, the Philippines, Europe and Indonesia. His work with premature infants over the past 20 years has in part led to the development and licensure of 2 products for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) prophylaxis (RSV –IGIV, and palivizumab). These studies carried out in premature infants have assessed the effects of prevention of RSV on long term respiratory morbidity. He has a broad background in infectious diseases with specific training and expertise in epidemiology and molecular virology.
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