Alicia Rector, BS
Alicia earned a bachelor's degree in Computer and Information Technology from Purdue University.
Mary Adam, MD, PhD
Global Health Research Interests: Biomedical Ethics, Community Health, Global Health Systems/Delivery, Pediatrics
Country: Kenya
Leigh Howard, MD, MPH
Leigh Howard, MD, MPH, is an associate professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at VUMC. As a pediatric infectious diseases specialist and investigator in the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program (VVRP), she has extensive experience conducting clinical and observational research and vaccine clinical trials in domestic and international settings.
Dr. Howard served as a Pediatric AIDS Corps physician in the Baylor International Pediatrics AIDS Initiative before completing a pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at Vanderbilt. During her fellowship, she obtained a master's degree in public health, devoting a portion of her time to defining health literacy and antiretroviral medication dosing errors in Mozambique. She has mentored research experience as a Fogarty International Clinical Research Fellow and an NIAID K23 Award recipient.
Her primary research focuses on respiratory viral and bacterial epidemiology, with a focus on the impact of interactions between respiratory viruses and Streptococcus pneumoniae in the pathogenesis of acute respiratory illness in children. She also studies pneumococcal antimicrobial resistance patterns, transmission of antimicrobial resistance within households, and the impact of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in this cohort.
Dr. Howard also serves an investigator in the NIH-funded Vanderbilt Vaccine Treatment and Evaluation Unit (VTEU) and the CDC-funded Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) network. She also co-led the Vanderbilt Initiative for the Study of Antimicrobial Resistance (VI-StAR) funded by the Vanderbilt Trans-Institutional Program, and she serves as the Vanderbilt site PI for the NIH-funded Pediatric Research Immune Network on SARS-CoV-2 (PRISM) study, a longitudinal cohort study designed to evaluate outcomes associated with COVID-19 and MIS-C in children.
Her dedication to mentoring and training junior researchers is evident in the success of her mentored undergraduate and graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who have assumed leadership positions in academia or public health. She is currently mentoring another post-doctoral fellow in ongoing antimicrobial resistance studies in Peru.
Salome Charalambous, MBBCH, MSc, PhD
Global Health Research Interests: Epidemiology, HIV/AIDS, Implementation Science, Infectious Diseases, Mobile Health, Tuberculosis (TB)
Countries: Gambia, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania
Richard Davis, MD
Global Health Research Interests: Cancer, Education and Training (Capacity Building), Medical Education, Neglected Tropical Diseases, Surgery, Trauma and Injury
Country: Kenya
Dr. Davis has practiced and taught surgery in Kenya full-time since 2007 at AIC Kijabe Hospital. He helped start the General Surgery residency in 2008. His interests include trauma and acute care surgery, oncologic surgery, head and neck surgery, facial fracture care, and surgical education.
Vinodh Edward, BSc, DTech
Global Health Research Interests: Biological Sciences, Clinical Trials, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Vaccinology
Country: South Africa
Jessica Castilho, MD, MPH
Global Health Research Interest: HIV/AIDS
Countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Peru
Dr. Castilho is an assistant professor and physician-scientist in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Castilho received her MD and MPH from Johns Hopkins University. She completed her residency in internal medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt. She joined the faculty in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt in 2015. Shortly after, she received a K23 Career Development award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study aging in adults with HIV. Her research on long-term outcomes of adults living with HIV utilizes observational cohorts of adults with HIV, including locally in Nashville, nationally with the North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design (NA-ACCORD), and internationally with the Caribbean, Central, and South America network for HIV epidemiology (CCASAnet). She is a PI of an R01 from the National Institute on Aging with a research focus on the non-infectious and long-term outcomes of adults living with HIV in Brazil. She has additional research expertise in infectious diseases and women's health and is the project PI for the HPV Impact study of the TN Emerging Infections Program. Dr. Castilho also sees patients with HIV at the Vanderbilt Comprehensive Care Clinic.
June Fabian, MBBCh, MPharm
Countries: Latvia, South Africa, Uganda
Dr. June Fabian is a clinician scientist specializing in the epidemiology of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Africa. She is a founding member of the African Research on Kidney Disease (ARK) Consortium, which comprises centres of research excellence in Malawi, South Africa, and Uganda, and maintains strong ties with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK. Dr. Fabian trained as an MD and specialized as a physician, followed by a subspecialty in nephrology at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
Her doctoral research was conducted at the rural SA/MRC Wits Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance site in Mpumalanga province, where she determined the population prevalence and associated risk factors for CKD. Additionally, she evaluated the performance of creatinine and cystatin C-based eGFR equations using plasma excretion of iohexol as the reference GFR. This study was the most extensive of its kind conducted in Africa, revealing that creatinine is a poor biomarker for eGFR and that the prevalence of CKD in African populations had been previously underestimated.
Dr. Fabian's findings have significant implications for both individual patient care and public health in Africa. Through the ARK Consortium, she collaborates with colleagues at VIGH to enhance the understanding of genetic risk factors related to CKD incidence and progression in African populations, while also facilitating comparative studies with different population groups in the USA.