Philip Berger MD

Medical Director, Inner City Health Program
St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, ON

Dr. Philip Berger is Medical Director of the Inner City Health Program at St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Canada. St. Michael’s Hospital is a fully-affiliated teaching hospital with the University of Toronto where Dr. Berger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Dr. Berger was Chief of the St. Michael’s Hospital, Department of Family and Community Medicine from 1997 to 2013. In January, 2014 Dr. Berger was appointed as the first Health Advocacy Lead for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Berger received his medical degree from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada in 1974. He completed his family practice training at St. Michael’s Hospital in 1978. Dr. Berger worked in a community practice from July, 1978 until December, 1993. During his early years in practice, Dr. Berger was the physician for many refugee applicants from Central and South America who reported that they had been tortured. Dr. Berger published and spoke widely about the physical and psychological effects of torture. He was the founder of the Canadian Medical Network – Amnesty International (English) in 1978 and its first National Coordinator from 1978-1982. In 1982 he was a founding member of the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture and was a member of its Board of Directors from 1982 to 1988. He is still an associate physician of the Centre.

John S. Brownstein PhD

Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Computational Epidemiology Group, The Children’s Hospital Informatics Program
Co-Creator, HealthMap

John Brownstein, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and directs the Computational Epidemiology Group at the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program in Boston. He was trained as an epidemiologist at Yale University. Overall, his research agenda aims to have translation impact on the surveillance, control and prevention of disease. He has been at the forefront of the development and application of public health surveillance including HealthMap.org, an internet-based global infectious disease intelligence system. The system is in use by over a million people a year including the CDC, WHO, DHS, DOD, HHS, and EU, and has been recognized by the National Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. Dr. Brownstein has advised the World Health Organization, Institute of Medicine, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House on real-time public health surveillance. He plays a leading role in a number of international committees including Board Member of the International Society for Disease Surveillance. He recently was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government to outstanding scientists and engineers. He has authored over one hundred peer-reviewed articles on epidemiology and public health. This work has been reported on widely including pieces in the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, National Public Radio and the BBC.

Martin Cetron, MD

Captain, U.S. Public Health Service
Director, Global Migration and Quarantine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Dr. Martin Cetron is currently the Director for the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine (DGMQ) at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The DGMQ mission is to prevent introduction and spread of infectious diseases in the U.S. and to prevent morbidity and mortality among immigrants, refugees, migrant workers, and international travelers. Dr. Cetron’s program is responsible for providing medical screening and disease prevention programs to 1.2M immigrants and 80,000 refugees prior to U.S. resettlement each year. Dr. Cetron has authored or co-authored more than 150 publications and received numerous awards for his work. In 2009, Dr. Cetron was honored with the Public Health Hero Award by Research America. In 2010, Dr. Cetron received the Dean’s Award by the Tufts Medical Alumni Association for Distinguished Contributions to Medicine 25 years post-graduation. In 2014, Dr. Cetron was honored by Dartmouth College with the Lester B. Granger Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the Martin Luther King Awards for a lifetime of work dedicated to social justice and combating health disparities.

Dr. Cetron has worked at the CDC since 1992 where he has led several domestic and international outbreak investigations, conducted epidemiologic research, and been involved in domestic and international emergency responses. He has played a leadership role in CDC responses to intentional and naturally-acquired emerging infectious disease outbreaks including the Anthrax Bioterrorism (2001), Global SARS epidemic (2003), U.S. Monkeypox Outbreak (2003), Pandemic Influenza H1N1 (2009), Haiti Earthquake and Cholera (2010), Japan Tsunami and Radiation Response(2011), and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) Coronavirus Response (2013).

Dr. Cetron is part of the CDC Pandemic Influenza Planning and Preparedness Team. He leads CDC’s preparedness for international border responses and community mitigation strategies. Dr. Cetron is also part of the WHO Influenza Pandemic Task Force, WHO Director General’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of Experts for Influenza and MERS Coronavirus.

Brian Gushulak MD

Migration Health Consultants, Inc.

Originally from Saskatchewan, Dr. Gushulak completed undergraduate and medical studies in that province interspersed with graduate studies at the University of Western Ontario. Joining the Immigration Medical Services of the Federal Government in the early 1980’s his career has focused on international health and migration both in Canada and abroad. He has held positions in the federal health and immigration departments in Canada. In the 1990s he was closely involved in the initial planning for the revision of the International Health Regulations. From 1996 to 2001 he worked in the international sector as the Director of Migration Health Services of the International Organization for Migration in Geneva. During that time he was involved in refugee-associated and complex humanitarian emergencies in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Asia and Africa.

From 2001 until 2004 he was the Director General of the then newly created Medical Services Branch in the Canadian Department of Citizenship and Immigration. Since that time he has been engaged in research and consulting in the area of health and population mobility. He has authored and co-authored several publications in that field. His research interests include migration health and population mobility, international disease control and the history of quarantine practices. He is the past Chair of both the International Centre for Migration and the Refugee and Migration Health Committee of the International Society for Travel Medicine.

Crista Johnson-Agbakwu MD MSc FACOG

Founder & Director, Refugee Women’s Health Clinic
Maricopa Integrated Health System

Dr. Crista Johnson-Agbakwu is an Obstetrician/Gynecologist at Maricopa Integrated Health System, Phoenix, AZ, where she is Founder and Director of the Refugee Women’s Health Clinic (RWHC). She is also a Research Assistant Professor of the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center (SIRC), which is a NIH-funded National Center of Excellence in minority health and health disparities at Arizona State University. She received her undergraduate degree from The Johns Hopkins University, medical degree from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and completed her residency in Obstetrics & Gynecology at the George Washington University Medical Center. She subsequently completed a fellowship in Female Sexual Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and then became a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Michigan where she obtained her Masters in Health and Health Care Research examining disparities in reproductive health care among refugees/immigrants through mixed-method Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR). She has presented nationally and internationally on refugee women’s health, and the challenges faced by health care providers in the care of women with Female Genital Cutting (FGC). She is a Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH) where she also serves as Chair of Online Services. Her current research incorporates CBPR to address health disparities among refugee women across many facets of health including women’s reproductive, preventive, sexual, and mental health. Through the RWHC, she has implemented a best practice model of care that is improving health care access and utilization, health literacy, community engagement, and health care provider cultural competency towards improved health outcomes for refugee women.

Rana Khan LLB

Rana Khan
Legal Officer Ontario Region, UNHCR

Rana Khan is a human rights lawyer with a keen interest in and commitment to refugee protection, in particular the issues surrounding women and children. Following her call to the Ontario Bar in 1993, Rana worked in private practice before joining the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1994. Since joining the UNHCR, Rana has worked as the Legal Officer for the region of Ontario and is the UNHCR focal point on the Global Detention Strategy – Beyond Detention in Canada and Vulnerable Claimants, including gender and children protection issues. Her work involves advocacy on refugee policy and promotion of best practices and standards towards asylum seekers nationally, regionally and internationally.
In addition to her work in Canada, Rana has also taken part in some of the organization’s international operations for refugee protection and humanitarian assistance. In 1998, acting as a UNHCR Protection Officer, Rana went on mission to Luau, Angola as part of a technical team that conducted refugee status determinations of Rwandan refugees. In 1999, Rana undertook a mission as a UNHCR Protection Officer to Kosovo, working in Mitrovica and Prizren. Her work on this mission included assessment of minority protection needs, facilitating reconciliation talks between conflicting groups, and drafting reports on assessment of humanitarian assistance needs.

Arthur Kim MD

Director, Viral Hepatitis Clinic (Infectious Diseases), Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Kim earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his MD from Harvard Medical School. After his internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and fellowships at MGH and Harvard Medical School, he joined the faculty at Harvard where he is currently Assistant Professor of Medicine.
Dr. Kim is the Director of the Viral Hepatitis Clinic within the Division of Infectious Diseases at MGH and focuses his clinical and research interests on special populations with HCV, including those with HIV-1/HCV coinfection, acute HCV, and in the prison population. He is a member of the AASLD / IDSA Guidance Panel for Recommendations for Testing, Managing, and Treating Hepatitis C and the ACTG Hepatitis Transformative Science Group. He is a Fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Transplant Infectious Disease. He has made numerous presentations related to HCV locally, nationally and abroad.

Curi Kim MD MPH

Director, Division of Refugee Health
Office of Refugee Resettlement
Administration for Children and Families
Department of Health and Human Services

Curi Kim, MD, MPH, is the Director for the Division of Refugee Health (DRH) at the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Administration for Children and Families. DRH works to promote refugee health and emotional wellness by providing federal leadership, partnership, and resources. Dr. Kim also provides medical and public health guidance to the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Program within the Division of Children’s Services at ORR.

Dr. Kim started working with ORR in 2012 as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) Medical Officer secunded to provide health-related technical assistance. She has been involved in the health issues of mobile populations since joining the CDC in 2007, serving as the Quarantine Medical Officer at the CDC Detroit Quarantine Station in Michigan, the acting Surveillance Team Lead of CDC’s Refugee Health Program in Kenya, and the Quarantine and Border Health Services Branch’s Science and Policy Medical Officer at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, GA. Prior to her federal career, she practiced medicine in a state prison in Michigan. She currently holds the rank of Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service and sees patients at a clinic for the uninsured in Arlington, VA.

Dr. Kim received her BS and MPH degrees from the University of Michigan and her MD from Wayne State University. She is board certified in both Family Medicine and Preventive Medicine.

Meb Rashid MD

Medical Director, Crossroads Clinic

Dr. Rashid is the medical director of the Crossroads Clinic, a medical clinic that serves newly arrived refugees in Toronto. He is a co-founder of the Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, an organizations founded to advocate for refugees to access health insurance. He was on the steering committee of the CCIRH, a group that developed evidence based guidelines for the assessment of newly arrived immigrants and refugees. He also co-founded the Christie Refugee Health Clinic, a health clinic located in a refugee shelter. He has brought together clinicians across Canada with an interest in refugee health through a web based project called the Canadian Refugee Health Network and through a group called the Refugee Health Network of Southern Ontario. He is a recipient of an Award of Excellence from the Ontario College of Family Physicians. He is on staff at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto and is affiliated with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Paul Spiegel MD MPH

Deputy Director, Division of Programme Support and Management, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Senior Fellow, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Adjunct Professor, Johns Hopkins and Emory Schools of Public Health

Dr. Paul Spiegel is the Deputy Director of the Division of Programme Support and Management at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) where he supervises and manages four technical sections – Public Health (including health, HIV, nutrition, water and sanitation, and food security; Cash-based Initiatives; Shelter and Settlement; Operations Solutions and Transitions (including energy, environment, livelihoods, and solutions). He is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and an Associate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Geneva Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action at the Université de Genève. He is Chair of the Funding Committee for the DFID and Wellcome Trust funded Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises or R2HC. He was previously Chief of the Public Health and HIV Section at UNHCR, where he still serves as the Refugee Agency’s HIV Global Coordinator at UNAIDS.

Before UNHCR, Dr. Spiegel worked as a Medical Epidemiologist in the International Emergency and Refugee Health Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Previously he worked as a Medical Coordinator with Médecins Sans Frontiéres and Médecins du Monde in refugee settings in Kenya and DRC as well as a consultant for numerous organisations including the Canadian Red Cross and the Pan American Health Organisation. He received his medical degree at the University of Toronto and his Master of Public Health and specialty in Preventive Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Spiegel has responded to and undertaken field work or research in humanitarian emergencies in numerous countries on all continents. He has published extensively in the field of humanitarian emergencies. His research interests in humanitarian emergencies are in epidemiological methods, health information systems and HIV. He has won numerous awards including CDC’s Charles C. Shepard award for outstanding research in Assessment and Epidemiology.

Debra Stein MD

Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture

Dr. Stein has been working alongside settlement counselours at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture (CCVT) for over 15 years, providing consultation and treatment to clients of all ages, with an emphasis on children, youth and families. Since 2007 her work at the CCVT has been under the auspices of the Inner City Health Associates, a St. Michael’s Hospital-based group which provides mental health and primary care for the homeless and precariously housed. Dr. Stein is a staff psychiatrist at the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre, where she is co-head of the Migration Team, a consultation team with expertise in issues of resettlement and acculturation. She is affiliated with the Division of Equity, Gender and Population in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

Patricia F. Walker MD DTM&H

Medical Director, HealthPartners Center for International Health

Dr. Patricia Walker serves as the Associate Program Director for the Global Health Pathway in the Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. She is an Associate Professor, Division of Infectious Disease and International Health in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota, and Adjunct Professor in the School Of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology and Community Health. She was the Medical Director at HealthPartners Center for International Health from 1988-2011, a nationally known refugee and immigrant health clinic. She stepped down in 2011 to pursue more research and teaching interests, supported by a Global Health Fellowship from the Medtronic Foundation. She continues to provide patient care and teach at the Center for International Health. She attended Mayo Medical School and Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, where she received a Graduate Travel Award for Outstanding Achievement in Internal Medicine. A recipient of numerous awards, she was honored in 2004 as one of the Top 100 Influential Health Care Leaders in Minnesota. In 2010 she received a Distinguished Alumni Citation in the Field of Medicine from her alma mater, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. She chaired the State of Minnesota Immigrant Health Task Force from 2002-2004, a state wide group of 70 experts who developed best practices in care for refugees and immigrants in Minnesota. These best practices are now being shared nationally and internationally. Dr. Walker has published multiple articles and book chapters on refugee and immigrant health, and co-edited a medical textbook published in October 2007, Immigrant Medicine, the first of it’s kind. She has served on HealthPartners Equitable Care Sponsor Group since its inception in 2000, focusing on designing and implementing system-wide interventions to reduce health disparities across ethnic groups.

She has served as Medical Director of HealthPartners Travel and Tropical Medicine Center since 1988. She co-directs the CDC GeoSentinel site located at HealthPartners Travel and Tropical Medicine Center. She received her Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1997, and practiced clinical tropical medicine as part of a Bush Medical Leadership Fellowship at Chiang Mai University in Thailand. She received her Certificate in Tropical Medicine and Travelers Health from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and a Certificate of Knowledge in Clinical Tropical Medicine from the International Society of Travel Medicine. She has worked internationally with refugees in Thailand, with both American Refugee Committee, and the International Rescue Committee. She has served on the board of directors of multiple organizations including Vietnamese Social Services of Minnesota, the Center for Victims of Torture, Regions Hospital, the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children in New York, and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

She maintains an active practice in clinical care of refugees and immigrants. She speaks Thai and Cambodian, and enjoys teaching, learning from people all over the world, international travel and her family. One of her many favourite quotes is from the Dalai Lama: “Education and compassion… if you combine these two, your whole life will be constructive and happy”.

Kate Yun MD MHS

Attending Physician
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
PolicyLab, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Katherine Yun is a general pediatrician and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Prior to medical school she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan and contributed to research on the health of survivors of human trafficking in Europe. She received her MD from Harvard Medical School and her pediatric training and MHS from Yale University, where she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and the supervisor of the Yale-New Haven Hospital Pediatric Refugee Clinic. While at Yale she partnered with IRIS – Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services to study the prevalence of chronic, non-communicable health conditions among recently-resettled refugees.

Dr. Yun currently works with the CHOP Refugee Health Program to provide primary care for refugee children in Philadelphia. She is also a faculty member in PolicyLab, an interdisciplinary research center at CHOP that uses data to inform better programs and policies for children and families, and a collaborator with the Bhutanese American Organization-Philadelphia, a nonprofit organization founded by and serving Philadelphia’s Bhutanese refugee community. Her research focuses on the integration of refugee and immigrant children and families into the US health system. Dr. Yun been invited faculty on refugee health for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Meeting and contributed to the AAP’s Immigrant Child Health Toolkit.