Advancing the Frontiers of Public Health and Medicine through Joint Brazil-US Initiatives

Paulo Cesar Basta

Researcher, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz

Paulo Cesar Basta graduated in Medicine (MD), in 1993, in São Paulo state. In 1999, he moved to Roraima state, in the Amazon region, to work as physician, in the primary care, with indigenous populations by the Roraima Indigenous Council, a Non-Governmental Organization. At that time, he had contact with the main infectious and neglected diseases (including tuberculosis, malaria, leishmaniosis and others) that affect those particular vulnerable groups.

In 2002, he moved to Rio de Janeiro in order to start his academic career in the Public Health Postgraduate Program. In 2005, he concluded the doctorate in Science (DSc), studying broad epidemiological aspects of tuberculosis among indigenous groups from Amazon.

In 2006, he assumed the position of researcher in Public Health in the National School of Public Health from Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), a Research Institute of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, where works till today.

Since then, Dr. Basta has been devoting to Health and Human Rights of the Indigenous populations, as well as different topics related to indigenous health concerns, including infectious disease, tuberculosis control, food and nutritional security, and issues related to health and environment, with particular interest in mercury poisoning.

During his trajectory, Dr. Basta performed several fieldworks in different parts of the Brazil, mainly in Amazon and Central-West region. The majority of that experiences is reported in papers published in national and international indexes journals.

João Biehl

Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology and Woodrow Wilson School Faculty Associate, Princeton University

João Biehl is Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology and Woodrow Wilson School Faculty Associate. He is also Director of the Brazil LAB and Co-Director of the Global Health Program. In his ethnographic and archival works, Biehl is concerned with the plasticity and unfinishedness of human subjects and lifeworlds. As he dissects past and present-day regimes of veridiction and falsification, he also explores the array of affects, ideas, forces, and objects that shape contemporary modes of existence, particularly in contexts of stark inequality in Brazil. While advancing the conceptual terrain of an anthropology of becoming, Biehl seeks to restore a sense of multiplicity and possibility to ethics, politics, and storytelling. In his current ethnographic research, Biehl is exploring the judicialization of health and the emergence of the category of patient-citizen-consumer in Brazil. Though the Amazonian Leapfrogging project, he is also chronicling multi-stakeholders’ efforts to articulate an alternative vision for the Brazilian Amazon, which is threatened by illegal deforestation, fires, and socioeconomic inequality. Biehl has authored Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment and Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival. Becoming. He is also the co-author of the books When People Come First: Critical Studies in Global Health and Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations. Biehl is co-editing the book series Critical Global Health at Duke University Press.

Forrest Crawford

Forrest Crawfor is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Associate Professor of Management, and Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Yale School of Public Health. His work focuses on mathematical and statistical problems related to discrete structures and stochastic processes in epidemiology, public health, biomedicine, and evolutionary science.

Julio Croda

Chief, Department of Communicable Diseases at the Secretary of Health Surveillance, Brazil

Dr. Croda is chief of the Department of Communicable Diseases at the Secretary of Health Surveillance in Brazil. He is an infectious disease physician-scientist and has served as the Principal Investigator for a series of studies involving active surveillance, molecular epidemiology and prospective cohort investigations for TB. He is particularly interested in understanding how prison contribute globally to TB epidemics, with an ultimate goal of developing more effective intervetions to control TB in the prison and community using translational research and implementation science. Dr. Croda’s training is in epidemiology and clinical medicine, and his work includes epidemiology, fieldwork, and analysis of programmatic data. His research program is currently funded by the NIH and by Brazilian research agencies such as CNPq and CAPES.

Sérgio Guerra

Dean; Professor of Administrative Law Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) Rio de Janeiro Law School

Sergio Guerra received his Post-Doctorate degree in Public Administration at FGV / EBAPE, his PhD in Economic Law from UGF, and a Master’s degree in Law from UCAM. He is currently Professor of Administrative Law at the Rio de Janeiro Law School of the Getulio Vargas Foundation - RJ, where he is also the director. Professor Guerra is the coordinator of the International Business Law Course at University of California (Irvine), referee of the Arbitration and Mediation Chamber of the Federation of Industries of Paraná, Referee of the FGV Chamber of Mediation and Arbitration, and Referee of the Brazilian Center for Mediation and Arbitration - CBMA. He is ambassador to Brazil at Yale University and editor of the Journal of Administrative Law (RDA), as well as legal adviser to the Administrative Law Commission of OAB / RJ. He has 30 years of experience in the area of public law, with emphasis on administrative, regulatory and environmental law, working mainly in the following subjects: regulatory agencies, regulation of public services and economic activities; contracting, arbitration and control of public administration. Professor Guerra is also the author of several books and legal articles.

Kenneth David Jackson

Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Portuguese Yale University

Kenneth David Jackson specializes in Portuguese and Brazilian literatures, modernist movements in literature and other arts, Portuguese literature and culture in Asia, poetry, music, and ethnography. His book Machado de Assis: A Literary Life was released by Yale UP in 2015. He is co-translator of Industrial Park(1993) by Patrícia Galvão and Seraphim Grosse Pointe(1979) by Oswald de Andrade.

He was named to the International Advisory Board of the Centro Interuniversitario de Estudos Camonianos at the Unversidade de Coimbra (Portugal). He conducted field research in Sri Lanka and India, was a Fulbright lecturer and researcher in Brazil (1984, 1990-91) and has performed as a cellist in several professional orchestras and a string quartet.

Albert Ko

Department Chair and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) Yale School of Public Health

Dr. Albert Icksang Ko, an infectious disease physician, is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale School of Public Health and Collaborating Researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazilian Ministry of Health. His research centers on the health problems that have emerged as a consequence of rapid urbanization and social inequity. Dr. Ko coordinates a research and training program on urban slum health in Brazil and is conducting prospective studies on rat-borne leptospirosis, dengue, meningitis and other vaccine preventable diseases. His research focuses on understanding the transmission dynamics and natural history of leptospirosis, which is as a model for an infectious disease that has emerged in slum environments due to the interaction of climate, urban ecology and social marginalization. Current research combines multidisciplinary epidemiology, ecology and translational research-based approaches to identify prevention and control strategies that can be implemented in slum communities. Dr. Ko is also Program Director at Yale for the Fogarty-NIH Global Health Equity Scholars Program which provides research training opportunities for US and LMIC post and pre-doctoral fellows at 21 international collaborating research sites. Since December 2016, the research and training program in the city of Salvador, Brazil has mobilized their efforts to investigate the Zika pandemic and epidemic of Zika virus associated microcephaly and birth defects.

Pericles Lewis

Vice Provost for International Affairs; Vice President for Global Strategy; Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature Yale University

Pericles Lewis earned his B.A. with first-class honors in English literature from McGill University in 1990 and his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 1997. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Yale faculty in 1998, with appointments in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature. From 2012 to 2017 Professor Lewis served as founding president of Yale-NUS College, a collaboration between Yale and the National University of Singapore. In the provost’s office, he works closely with the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He also oversees the Office of International Affairs and the Office of International Students and Scholars and guides Yale’s involvement in Yale-NUS College. A former member of the advisory board of the American Comparative Literature Association, Professor Lewis is the author or editor of six books on modern European literature; his current research addresses liberal education in the United States and worldwide.

Eduardo Massad

Professor of Applied Mathematics 
Fundação Getúlio Vargas

Eduardo Massad is Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, Chartered Mathematician (IMA-UK), Chartered Scientist (SciCoun-UK), and Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He has almost 40 years of experience in applying mathematical methods to medical problems and is co-editor of the Elsevier’s book Global Health Informatics: How Information Technology Can Change Our Lives in a Globalized World.

Amy Nunn

Associate Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences, School of Public Health 
Brown University

Dr. Amy Nunn is an Associate Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Brown University School of Public Health. She holds a secondary appointment in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brown University Medical School. She is also the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Public Health Institute (RIPHI). Dr. Nunn conducts applied research on how to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in HIV infection, treatment and care. With colleagues, she oversees two pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) implementation science programs in Providence, Rhode Island and Jackson, Mississippi. She also conducts HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV) prevention research about how to best link people living with HCV and HIV to medical care. Dr. Nunn is best known for her innovative community partnerships to address disparities, including engaging clergy and community leaders in HIV testing, treatment and social marketing campaigns. A social scientist by training, she has worked in several countries and conducted domestic and international research on a variety of health topics, including HIV/AIDS, access to reproductive health services, and family planning. Dr. Nunn has also conducted global health policy research that explores how politics, economics and intellectual property rights affect AIDS policy and access to medicines in developing countries. She is the author of the book The Politics and History of AIDS Treatment in Brazil, whose foreword was written by Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, and which was published in 2009 by Springer. She has also written numerous peer-reviewed articles about Brazil’s AIDS treatment program. Dr. Nunn has received research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the US

Departments of Defense, Agriculture and Education, the Rhode Island Foundation, the MAC AIDS Fund, AARP Foundation, the American Heart Association, among other institutions. She received the “Outstanding New Researcher Award” at the 2009 CDC HIV Prevention Conference and an NIH Career Development Award in 2010. Dr. Nunn holds masters and doctoral degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health and is a former Fulbright Scholar.

Frederico Peres

Senior Researcher, Brazilian Ministry of Health 
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz

Graduated in Biological Sciences from Rio de Janeiro State University (1996), with a Masters degree in Public Health from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (1999), a PhD degree in Public Health from the State University of Campinas (2003) and a Post-doctoral internship in Occupational and Environmental Health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, USA (2012). A Senior Researcher at Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation / Brazil, Dr. Peres has served as Vice-Chair of the Center for Studies on Occupational Health and Human Ecology (CESTEH / ENSP / FIOCRUZ) between 2005 and 2010 and Associate Dean of Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (ENSP / FIOCRUZ) between 2013 and 2016.

Dr. Peres is currently a fellow researcher at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, USA, and a Visiting Associate Professor at the National School of Public Health at the NOVA University of Lisbon (ENSP-NOVA) in Lisbon, Portugal. He also acts as a guest lecturer in courses and research projects at the Universidad de la República (Uruguay) and at the Dr. Salvador Allende School of Public Health / Universidad de Chile.

Danielle Hanna Rached

Assistant Professor of Law 
Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) Rio de Janeiro Law School

Danielle Rached is an assistant professor of law at Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School in Rio de Janeiro, where she teaches transnational law and related subjects. She has written about the legitimacy of international institutions, in a context of their growing intrusiveness, analysing whether and how an international institution can be morally respectable, politically effective and legally consistent. Rached received her graduate degrees from University of Edinburgh (LL.M. (’07) and PhD (’13)).

Helena Ribeiro

Professor of Global Environmental Health and Sustainability 
University of São Paulo

Helena Ribeiro is a Professor of Global Environmental Health and Sustainability in the Department of Environmental Health at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. She is also the Coordinator of the Doctorate Program in Global Health and Sustainability. She received her PhD in Physical Geography from the University of São Paulo; her MA from the University of California Berkeley; and her BSc from Catholic University of São Paulo. Professor Ribeiro completed her post-doctoral studies in Environment and Development at the International Academy of Environment in Geneva, Switzerland. She is the former scientific editor of the journal Saúde e Sociedade. Professor Ribeiro’s research interests include global health; environmental health, including air pollution in cities; health disease geography; and environmental policy, planning, and management.

Romulo Sampiao

Professor of Law and the Director of the Research and Policy Center for Law and the Environment, Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) Law School

Professor Sampaio is a founding Partner of Reis & Sampaio LL.P. He holds Doctorate (S.J.D.) and Master (LL.M.) degrees in Environmental Law from Pace University School of Law and a Master of Laws in Economic and Social Law and LL.B. from Pontific Catholic University of Paraná Law School (PUC-PR). He is currently a professor of law and the Director of the Research and Policy Center for Law and the Environment (CDMA) at Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) School of Law in Rio de Janeiro. He is also a visiting professor at Georgia State University School of Law in Atlanta. At Pace, Professor Sampaio is the Director for International Services at the Brazil-American Institute for Law and Environment (BAILE) and teaches Comparative Environmental Law - Brazil with Professor David Cassuto.

Stuart Schwartz

George Burton Adams Professor of History
Yale University

Professor Schwartz, who received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1968, specializes in the History of colonial Latin America, especially Brazil and on the history of Early Modern expansion. Among his books are Sovereignty and Society in Colonial Brazil (1973), Early Latin America (1983), Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society (1985), Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels (1992), as editor, A Governor and His Image in Baroque Brazil (1979), Implicit Understandings (1994), Victors And Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico (2000), Cambridge History Of Native Peoples Of The Americas: South America (1999), and All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (2008). He is presently working on several projects: a history of independence of Portugal and the crisis of the Iberian Atlantic, 1620-1670; and a social history of Caribbean hurricanes.

Christen Smith

Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology 
The University of Texas at Austin

Christen Smith researches engendered anti-Black state violence and Black community responses to it in Brazil and the Americas. Her work primarily focuses on transnational anti-Black police violence, Black liberation struggles, the paradox of Black citizenship in the Americas, and the dialectic between the enjoyment of Black culture and the killing of Black people. Her book, Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence and Performance in Brazil uses the lens of performance to examine the immediate and long-term impact of police violence on the Black population of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil and the grassroots movement to denounce and end this violence. Her more recent, comparative work examines the lingering, deadly impact of police violence on black women in Brazil and the U.S.

Claudio Struchiner

Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics„ Fundação Getúlio Vargas and Researcher, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz

Dr. Struchiner is Full Professor at the School of Applied Mathematics (EMAp) at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), Full Professor (retired) at Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ) and Associate Professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). He earned a Medical Doctor degree from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in 1976 and a Master`s degree (1981) from the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA). He also holds a Sc.D. in Populational Dynamics of Infectious Diseases from Harvard University (1988). He is a senior researcher with the Brazilian Research Council (CNPq) and has been a visiting Professor at the University of Montreal and a Fullbright scholar at Yale University. His research activities span a wide range of applications in infectious diseases epidemiology. These activities motivated new insights on the development of epidemiological, statistical, mathematical and computational methods applied to the evaluation and surveillance of public health interventions. His contributions at the interface of these disciplines include papers on several aspects of the epidemiology of the Brazilian AIDS epidemics, the evaluation of malaria, yellow fever and meningococcal vaccines, genetic epidemiology, pharmacogenomics, and on the methodological aspects of the evaluation of health intervention programs, in particular, on estimating the efficacy of new vaccines. His contributions to this latter topic, spanning more than two decades of continuous work with several collaborators, are summarized in a book, Design and Analysis of Vaccine Studies published by Springer Verlag.

Claudia Valeggia

Professor of Anthropology and Spanish and Portuguese; Chair, Council on Latin American & Iberian Studies Yale University

Claudia Valeggia’s work is primarily concerned with the interactions between human reproductive biology and the ecological and cultural context in which it develops. Her research program takes a biocultural approach, that is, the interplay between biology and culture takes a central role in interpreting reproductive and other demographical patterns. Some of the topics she has explored are the determinants of the return to postpartum fecundity, the variation in reproductive hormonal levels within and between women in relation to environmental variables, growth and development patterns in infants and children, and variation in male and female life history in populations experiencing drastic lifestyle changes.

Professor Valeggia is originally from Argentina, where she received her degree in biology. She got her PhD from the University of California, Davis in 1996, then went on to do a postdoc at Harvard University and in 2005 joined the Department of Anthropology at Penn. In 2014, Professor Valeggia moved to Yale University where she is a professor in the Department of Anthropology

Daniel Vargas

Professor of Law Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) Rio de Janeiro Law School

Daniel Vargas is a professor of law at FGV Law School in Rio de Janeiro. He holds SJD ‘13 and LL.M. ‘06 degrees from Harvard Law School. Before joining FGV, he served in different positions at the Brazilian Government, including Secretary of Sustainable Development (in charge of public policies in the Brazilian Amazon), Secretary of Strategic Affairs (in charge of developmental policies in the Brazilian Northeast and Center-West regions), Chief of Staff and (interim) Minister of Strategic Affairs. He currently leads the newly created Center on Federalism and Education at FGV Law School, committed to research the legal and institutional challenges to the enhancement of the quality of education in the country.

Dan Weinberger

Associate Professor of Epidemiology 
Yale School of Public Health

Dan Weinberger is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health. His research group focuses on understanding the biological and epidemiological drivers of respiratory infections, including pneumococcus, RSV, and influenza. They also work with a number of partners, including the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization, to develop more robust methods to evaluate the impact of vaccines in different populations. He works with groups around Latin America in evaluating the impacts of pneumococcal vaccines on rates of disease and death.