New Faculty 2022
Beth Cameron Ph.D.
professor of the practoce of health services, policy, and practice
A national expert in health security, pandemic preparedness, biosecurity, biodefense, and bioterrorism, Beth Cameron Ph.D. has worked at the highest levels of government, including serving as the special assistant to the President and senior director for Global Health Security and Biodefense for the White House National Security Council. A key member of the School's pandemic preparedness and response leadership team, she will split her time, also serving as a senior advisor for global health security in the USAID Bureau for Global Health.
Through her various prior leadership positions across the U.S. Government in the past 20 years, including at the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense, as well as in the Obama administration and now Biden White House, Cameron was instrumental to the COVID-19 response, to re-establishing the National Security Council Directorate on Global Health Security and Biodefense, and to developing and launching the U.S. Government’s Global Health Security Agenda; she also helped counter global biological catastrophes, and bolster health security financing. Her work has helped address homeland and national security threats by enhancing pandemic preparedness, biosecurity and biosafety; improving emerging infectious disease surveillance, and countering the development and use of biological weapons. Most recently, she helped formulate and coordinate President Biden’s international strategy for fighting COVID-19, including the recent COVID-19 summit, and led administration efforts to build national and global preparedness and financing for pandemics and other emerging threats.
Beth Cameron holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the Human Genetics and Molecular Biology Program at Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Biology from the University of Virginia. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Irene Papanicolas Ph.D.
professor of health services, policy, and practice
Irene Papanicolas Ph.D. focuses her research and teaching on assessing the performance of health systems, including methods to compare national health systems. She works closely with experts in policy, practice and research to identify cross-country learning. Papanicolas is also a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and serves as Associate Editor of the journal Health Policy.
Coming to Brown SPH from the London School of Economics, she will lead a new effort on Comparative Health Systems that will equip health systems with the knowledge and tools needed to address current and future challenges and improve their performance. She will join the School in September as professor of health services, policy, and practice.
“To protect populations from existing and future global challenges to health, including climate change, pandemics, and economic crises, we need to improve health systems and the collaboration between them. Our work on Comparative Health Systems at Brown will aim to produce evidence on effective and efficient strategies to improve health system performance,” said Papanicolas.
Andrew (Andy) Ryan Ph.D.
professor of health services, policy, and practice
Andrew (Andy) Ryan Ph.D. is coming to Brown from the University of Michigan School of Public Health where he served as director of the Center for Evaluating Health Reform, and co-director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy, and associate director of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation’s Data and Methods Hub.
A national leader in health policy research and training, Ryan will build out a new effort on Health Policy at Brown SPH focused on the effects of changes in health policy on quality of care, healthcare spending, and value, such as quantitative research to evaluate and improve payment policy in the U.S. He will collaborate across health policy researchers and centers at the university and beyond, and pilot partnerships with other disciplines, such as integrating legal scholarship to advocate for regulatory changes. Ryan will join the School in September as professor of health services, policy, and practice.
“The US health policy landscape is constantly shifting. Timely research has the potential to identify key problems and pose solutions. Building off of the success of Brown’s outstanding faculty, our work will advance rigorous policy research to support needed reforms to U.S. health care,” said Ryan.
Malabika Sarker Ph.D.
professor of the practice of behavioral and social sciences
Malabika Sarker Ph.D. is coming to Brown from Brac University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. An internationally known expert in public health implementation science research and practice, she founded the Center of Excellence for Science of Implementation and Scale Up at BRAC, and leads implementation science related education, training, research and advocacy. Sarker serves on multiple advisory boards, including Lancet Global Health, Medical Research Council UK, National Institute of Health Research UK, the Evaluation Advisory Committee of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and she chairs the advisory board of the HRP Alliance for Research Capacity Strengthening.
At Brown SPH, Sarker will focus on implementation science research and teaching, build a partnership platform with other academic institutions and organizations in the global south, and lead new learning initiatives such as creating a structured global public health immersive experiential learning program for MPH and doctoral students. She will join the School in September as professor of the practice of behavioral and social sciences.
“I am excited to be part of this new phase of the Brown public health era. We will foster Implementation Science and build a south-north platform for shared learning to tackle global health threats created by uneven-paced globalization,” said Sarker.
Craig Spencer M.D., MPH
associate professor of the practice of health services, policy, and practice
Craig Spencer M.D., MPH will join Brown from the Columbia University Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital where he served as director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine. He has worked on health crises around the globe, including coordinating the Doctors Without Borders national epidemiological response in Guinea during the Ebola outbreak. In 2021, Spencer won an Emmy award for a short film about the medical response to the COVID pandemic in the United States.
At Brown, Dr. Spencer will be focusing on the historical foundations of public health practice, especially with respect to global health, humanitarian response, and pandemic preparedness. Looking through the lens of history—at events as diverse as colonial sleeping sickness campaigns to the global response to COVID-19—his program will bring together learning from public health, historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists to highlight why understanding public health’s past is crucial for guiding its current and future development. Dr. Spencer will join the School in September as associate professor of the practice of health services, policy, and practice.
“I’m honored and ecstatic to be part of the exciting growth at the Brown SPH. I’m especially looking forward to working together with students and faculty throughout the school to explore the foundations of public health policy and using that knowledge to build better health systems for communities all over the world,” said Dr. Spencer.
New Faculty 2021
Madina Agénor, ScD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Alyssa Bilinski, Ph.D.
Peterson Family Assistant Professor of Health Policy, Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice and Biostatistics
Kaley Hayes, PharmD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice
Aditya Khanna, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Cyrus Kosar, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice
Youjin Lee, Ph.D.
Manning Assistant Professor of Biostatistics
Arman Oganisian, MS
Assistant Professor of Biostatistics
Robert Rosales, PhD, LCSW
Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Erica Walker, MSc, ScD
Assistant Professor of Epidemiology
Jesse Yedinak, MPA
Assistant Professor of the Practice of Epidemiology
