New Team Leaders Set to Begin Work in Kenya
New team leaders from the AMPATH Consortium arrive in Eldoret later this summer to begin work beside their Kenyan colleagues, caring for patients, educating medical trainees and improving healthcare through research and innovation.
The five physicians who will be team leaders for medicine, pediatrics, surgery, oncology and adolescent/reproductive health, bring a broad range of experience, interests and aspirations to their new roles.
Dr. Sophia Abdulhai
Sophia Abdulhai, MD, surgery team leader, is committed to being involved with organizations and projects that focus on creating sustainable change through collaborations with the local communities. “One of the big causes of surgical disparities in low- and middle-income countries is a lack of trained providers. Instead of attempting to fill the gap with short-term medical mission trips that have higher-than-normal complications rates due to lack of appropriate perioperative care, the most sustainable way to address this issue is through the education of local providers. That is exactly what AMPATH has done and continues to do in Kenya, which is what attracted me to the organization,” said Dr. Abdulhai.
Dr. Abdulhai looks forward to participating in the education of residents and medical student and is excited about learning from Kenyan surgeons particularly on disease processes and patterns in Kenya that she has yet to encounter in her career. She plans to help Kenyan residents and medical students develop research projects that will be useful to them and the community.
Dr. Abdulhai earned her MD from the George Washington School of Medicine and completed a pediatric surgery research fellowship at Akron Children’s Hospital and categorical general surgery residency at East Carolina University and Vidant Medical Center. She joins AMPATH following the completion of a surgical critical care fellowship at Queens Medical Center in Hawaii. Prior to medical school Dr. Abdulhai was a public health volunteer for the U.S. Peace Corp in Kenya for two years.
Medicine team leader Lu’aie Kailani, MD, received the Queen Elizabeth medal for serving in Sierra Leone during West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014 and is interested in emphasizing the role of infectious diseases as a specialty in low- and middle-income countries. He hopes to contribute to a structured program in advancing infectious disease care.
Dr. Lu’aie Kailani
“The idea of placing the academic in the front seat in order to solve problems in uncharted seas is one of the reasons I am attracted to AMPATH,” said Dr. Kailani. “Being in the role of internal medicine team leader will provide me with the opportunity to learn through interactions with young brains about possible ways of exploring the solutions,” he added. He also looks forward to learning more about how other cultures approach various aspects of medicine.
Dr. Kailani earned an MBBS from the University of Khartoum in Sudan and an MD from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center where he also completed his residency. He holds an MPH from The Dartmouth Institute and completed a residency in Leadership and Preventive Medicine and fellowship in infectious disease at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. In addition to Sierra Leone, he has also worked in Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Liberia.
Dr. Julika Kaplan
The incoming pediatrics team leader, Julika Kaplan, MD, is excited about the opportunity to contribute to Kenyan trainees’ medical education while learning from their experience caring for patients in Eldoret’s clinical and cultural context. “I also look forward to working with North American learners as they cultivate cultural humility and become advocates for global health equity during their time in Kenya,” she said. Dr. Kaplan is interested in learning more about AMPATH’s partnership with the Kenyan Ministry of Health and contributing to ongoing population health initiatives.
As an undergraduate, Dr. Kaplan pursued a major in Philosophy and a minor in Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities, which led to an interest in health equity and global health ethics. She learned the importance of critically evaluating international aid efforts and partnering with communities while volunteering with non-profit organizations. Dr. Kaplan aspires to work for a sustainable, bidirectional global health program driven by local needs. “AMPATH prioritizes individual patient care but also supports longitudinal, collaborative research projects and trains future leaders in global health through educational exchanges,” she said.
Dr. Kaplan attended medical school at Baylor College of Medicine, where she completed the Global Health, Medical Ethics, and Care of the Underserved tracks and earned the Certificate of Knowledge in Clinical Tropical Medicine and Travelers’ Health. She stayed at Baylor College of Medicine for her residency in internal medicine and pediatrics, during which she gained valuable clinical experience caring for Navajo patients at the rural Northern Navajo Medical Center in Shiprock, New Mexico. She has spent time in South Africa, India, Ghana, Malawi, and Botswana studying health systems, caring for children with HIV, and collaborating with local colleagues on research projects.
Jennifer Morgan, MD, serves as the new oncology team leader and was attracted to AMPATH’s commitment to “leading with care.” She is excited to be a part of launching one of the first medical oncology fellowships in the region and looks forward to sharing clinical experiences and research ideas with colleagues in Eldoret, IU and around the world. “AMPATH’s emphasis on equity, shared learning, and health system strengthening are keys to a sustainable global health partnership and something I wanted to be a part of,” she said.
Dr. Jennifer Morgan
Dr. Morgan plans to commence research projects in the fields of implementation science and breast cancer and will be looking to implement interventions that aim to improve breast cancer treatment outcomes and increase access to breast cancer screening at a community level. She received the American Society of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award, was a Fogarty Global Health Fellow and was also awarded a Global Women’s Health Fellowship— all related to researching breast cancer treatment in Malawi. She was also the oncology clinical director for Partners in Health-Rwanda.
Dr. Morgan earned her MD from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University where she was part of the Global Health Clinical Scholars Certificate Program. She was a hematology and oncology fellow at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and received the Outstanding Fellow Award from the North Carolina Oncology Association.
Wan-Ju Wu, MD, MPH, adolescent/reproductive health team leader, has worked in various capacities with different global health partnerships in the past and is drawn to the AMPATH partnership’s depth of commitment. “I'm really interested in being a part of a team that is thinking critically and willing to admit and learn from prior failures in order to grow equitable, bidirectional global health partnerships,” she said.
Dr. Wan-Ju Wu
Dr. Wu joins AMPATH after serving as an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine and physician at Boston Medical Center. She received her MD from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and her MPH from Boston University. She completed residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Sciences University and a fellowship in Complex Family Planning and Global Women's Health at Harvard Medical School. She has worked on HIV/AIDS and women's health projects in China, Burma, South Africa and Nepal and also coordinated a girls’ youth group in western Kenya prior to attending medical school. Her current research interests include community-based initiatives for provision of family planning services and strategies to improve implementation of reproductive health programs.
Dr. Wu is looking forward to all of the learning opportunities that await. “I have always learned so much from the other physicians, midwives, nurses, and of course the patients that I have worked with in global health partnerships,” Dr. Wu added.
Caitrin Kelly, MD, MPH, remains in her leadership role as associate executive site director working with AMPATH’s population health and ECHO initiatives. Joanna Hunter-Squires, MD, has served as the surgery team leader in Kenya for three years and will return to a role as assistant professor of clinical surgery at IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
AMPATH team leaders live in Eldoret full-time and commit to one or more years in the role. The new team leaders are faculty members at Indiana University (medicine, pediatrics, oncology and surgery) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (adolescent/reproductive health).
We welcome Drs. Abdulhai, Kailani, Kaplan, Morgan and Wu to the AMPATH family!