Anne Austin, Deputy Director of Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation
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Born in Indonesia to a Norwegian mother and American father, and raised in Nigeria, Kenya and Saudi Arabia, Anne Austin brings a personal and professional global perspective to the MHTF. She holds a BA from Emory University, a MPH from the Rollins School of Public Health, and an ScD from the Harvard School of Public Health’s in Global Health and Population Studies and was named a Pritzker Fellow two years in a row.
Austin has conducted extensive research in areas that make her exceptionally well-suited to lead the MHTF’s innovative implementation research agenda on the quality of maternal health care. Her technical and analytical skills will enable the MHTF to contribute significantly to the global challenge of systematizing proven interventions to improve maternal health outcomes especially in high-burden settings. Among her studies, Austin has looked at maternal and child health trends in Egypt, analyzed global policy approaches to child nutrition, analyzed couple concordance on attitudes towards abortion and knowledge of abortion, and managed a unique CDC study on the prevention of malaria in pregnancy.
Elizabeth Claise, Project Assistant
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Elizabeth Claise joined the Women and Health Initiative in November 2011 as the project assistant for the Maternal Health Task Force. Most recently, she worked at the Harvard Law School Library as an assistant to the acquisitions department for German and Spanish language materials, working specifically on the Nuremberg Trials Project. Ms. Claise began her career in social justice at age 16 when she traveled to rural Honduras with the Amigos de las Americas program. This experience opened her eyes to the developing world and led her back to Honduras and Latin America several times. She completed a three year intensive study on free trade agreements in Latin America and spent a summer in Mexico City interning with a non-profit organization focused on sweatshop workers rights. Ms. Claise also spent a semester in Ecuador completing an independent study project on low-income housing for single women residing in Loja. Ms. Claise completed her BA at Connecticut College, where she studied international relations with a focus on economic development.
Ana Langer, Director of the Maternal Health Task Force
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Ana Langer, M.D., recently joined the Harvard School of Public Health as the leader of the newly launched Women and Health flagship initiative. For the past five years, Dr. Langer served as the President of EngenderHealth, a leading international reproductive health organization working to improve the quality of health care in the world's poorest communities. Prior to joining EngenderHealth, Dr. Langer served as the Population Council's Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, overseeing reproductive health, family planning, and HIV prevention programs and research in more than 10 countries. Prior to that, Dr. Langer was a special advisor to the Minister of Health in Mexico, and as Director of the Division of Research on Women and Children's Health for the Mexican National Institute of Public Health. Dr. Langer led efforts to advance policies aimed at reducing maternal mortality and disability. Dr. Langer has published in more than 30 peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as in the popular press including the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, and The Guardian. Dr. Langer sits on the World Health Organization's Advisory Committee on Health Research, and is the co-chair of the International Planned Parenthood Federation's International Medical Advisory Panel. Dr. Langer currently serves on several editorial boards, including The Lancet, the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, and the WHO Reproductive Health Library. Dr. Langer earned her medical degree from the National University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is board certified in pediatrics and neonatology. Originally from Argentina, she is fluent in Spanish, French, and English and is proficient in Portuguese.
Sam Lattof, Senior Project Manager
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Samantha R. Lattof joined the Women and Health Initiative at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in December 2010 as the project manager for maternal health. She previously worked in Ghana with Columbia University and Ghana Health Service on a health system strengthening project that aimed to reduce maternal and child mortality. Sam also collaborated with Harvard Law School and the University of Ghana on revisions to Ghana's National Health Insurance Scheme. In 2009, she worked in Ghana on the Women's Health Study of Accra, for which she conducted a pilot study on the use of verbal autopsies. Prior to her work in Ghana, Sam worked for Washington University School of Medicine as a pediatric neurology research assistant, supported the programming team at Africa Regional Services in Paris, and monitored two of the United Nations' Treaty Bodies while interning with International Service for Human Rights in Geneva. Sam completed her MSc at HSPH in Global Health and Population with an interdisciplinary concentration in Women, Gender and Health and her BA at Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in Anthropology, International Studies, and Women & Gender Studies.
Kate Mitchell, Manager of the Knowledge Management System
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Kate Mitchell joined the Maternal Health Task Force as the Managing Editor of the Knowledge Management System in January 2012. From 2010-2011, Kate served as a Clinton Fellow in Jharkhand, India where she helped to coordinate training for frontline health workers and community organizations. She also explored community perceptions of India's cash transfer program that aims to increase institutional deliveries—and shared photos and stories from the field on various global health blogs. Before heading to India, Kate worked on the first phase of the Maternal Health Task Force where she helped to launch the MHTF Knowledge Management System, facilitated online dialogue among global health practitioners around specific maternal health issues, and produced ongoing content for the MHTF Blog. Kate earned her MPH from Boston University. She completed her practicum in the Dominican Republic and Haiti where she produced a multimedia piece documenting the stories of Dominican and Haitian women who experienced life-threatening barriers to quality maternal health services. Kate holds a BA in International Relations, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, from Florida International University. She is fluent in Spanish and a lover of yoga. Kate is fascinated by the intersection of public health and journalism--and is always on the lookout for new links between storytelling and community engagement and mobilization.
Mary Nell Wegner, Deputy Director of Partnership Engagement
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Mary Nell Wegner did her undergraduate work in cultural anthropology (BA, Yale) and graduate work in international education (EdM, Harvard) and public health (MPH, UCLA). She has spent the last 20 years working in international public health with a focus on gender, reproductive health, and maternity care. She has worked directly for donors (the Rockefeller Foundation, UNFPA, and the Empower Foundation) as well as community-based and nonprofit organizations at both the local and global levels (Jubilee Refugee Camp, The White Mountain Apache Tribal Health Authority, The Women's Dignity Project, Planned Parenthood of CT, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, The Margaret Sanger Center, and EngenderHealth). She has worked with teams to help strengthen reproductive health programming in a variety of contexts in Colombia,Ethiopia, India, Ghana, Hong Kong, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and the US. She has a special interest in work with adolescents. In the last ten years, Mary Nell has written and spoken on maternal health in low resource settings, including issues of quality of care in labor and delivery, obstetric fistula prevention and treatment, mens' roles in family planning, and reproductive health choices.
Christopher Lindahl, Knowledge Management Assistant
Christopher earned a Master of Public Administration from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University in May 2010. During graduate school, he was an intern with the International Refugee Rights Initiative in New York and Kampala, Uganda and the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York and consulted with the World Bank's External and UN Relations Office. Prior to NYU, Christopher taught high school in the Bronx, NY and worked as a legal assistant in Manhattan. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Boston College in history and secondary education
Tim Thomas, Deputy Director for Policy and Communications
Tim began his career at The Population Council in New York where he was the Special Assistant to the President, charged with cultivating and maintaining institutional relationships with government overseas development assistance agencies, as well as foundations, NGOs, multilateral institutions and UN agencies. He also served as the primary point of contact with the U.S. Government, managing the Council's multi-million dollar co-operative agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 2001, Tim joined the London-based communications agency InterScience as a senior consultant where he worked with a range of clients on their sexual and reproductive health programs. In 2005, Tim was appointed Executive Director of the Staying Alive Foundation at MTV Networks International based in New York. As a global grant-making and advocacy organization, the Foundation encouraged and enabled young people who are involved in HIV and AIDS awareness, education and prevention campaigns especially in developing countries. When MTV changed its philanthropic directions in late 2007, Tim returned to private consulting. He serves on the board of Artists Striving to End Poverty and is on the board of advisors of The Condom Project. He has traveled extensively in Africa, South Asia and Europe. He graduated with honors from the Interlochen Arts Academy; he holds a Bachelors of Arts degree from Iowa State University and a Masters of Fine Arts degree from New York University.
