Global Health Sciences

Faculty Bios

Vincanne Adams, PhD

Dr. Adams received her BA from Brown University and her PhD in medical anthropology from UCSF/UCB. She has been with UCSF in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine since 2000, where she is currently a professor. She is also the Director of the joint UCSF/UCB Graduate Program in Medical Anthropology.

Dr. Adams developed the Medicine and Humanities Area of Concentration Program for 2 nd-4 th year medical students at UCSF. She also helped develop a curriculum for Global Health Diplomacy exploring the links between medicine, health disparities and politics in the US and internationally. Dr. Adams is the co-founder of the initiative in Global Health Diplomacy at UCSF.

She has conducted research on health development in Asia ( Nepal, Tibet, China) since 1982 and is the author of three books and numerous articles on the social dynamics of modernization, health development, women’s health, and the ethics and politics of globalizing medicine and science. Her current research includes an NIH funded research project on Blood Donation in China, an NSF funded project on translating Tibetan clinical research in Eastern Tibet, and an NIH funded study of displacement among New Orleans residents post Katrina.

Nancy Burke, PhD

Dr. Burke received her BA in English Literature from the University of Tennessee and her PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of New Mexico. She has held a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine and the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCSF since 2004.

Dr. Burke has conducted research in Cuba and with immigrant groups in the Southwestern and Western US. Her research interests include social inequalities in immigrant health, with a specific focus on cancer. Her current research includes an NCI Career Development Award focused on cancer treatment among underserved patients in a safety net hospital setting, a Susan G. Komen Foundation Breast Cancer Disparities research study addressing local and transnational support systems for Filipina immigrants with breast cancer, and an Avon Foundation funded study of navigation and information for poor and minority breast cancer patients in public hospitals. She is the author of numerous articles on inequalities in health, women’s health, and cultural and social issues in cancer prevention and treatment.

Madhavi Dandu , MD, MPH

Dr. Madhavi Dandu is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature and medical degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She completed her residency training in the Categorical Medicine Program at UCSF in 2003. Afterwards, Dr. Dandu attended the University of California, Berkeley and received a Masters in Public Health with a focus on international health and health and human rights.

At UCSF, Dr. Dandu spends much of her time on the inpatient clinical and consults services supervising and teaching medical students and residents. Her main non-clinical interest is in Global Health education. She is the Associate Director of the Pathway in Global Health and in that capacity directs the Office of International Programs at the Medical School. She also directs the Global Health Area of Distinction for the Internal Medicine Residency, a program designed to provide training and exposure to global health for internal medicine residents. Her main research interest has been in health and human rights education. Dr. Dandu co-teaches the Health and Human Rights fall medical student elective and is currently working on a human rights education curriculum.

In addition to her global health work, she continues her work at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health as the academic coordinator for the one-year Interdisciplinary MPH program. There she helps coordinate the curriculum, provides mentoring, and co-teaches the interdisciplinary seminar.

Nicholas A. Daniels, MD, MPH

Dr. Daniels received his BA from Cornell University and his medical degree from the University of Washington, Seattle. He completed a residency with the Department of Medicine at UCSF, is board certified in Internal Medicine, and has a Masters in Public Health degree from Yale University. Between 1997-1999, Dr. Daniels completed a fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer in the Foodborne1 and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the National Center for Infectious Diseases. He has also worked as a diarrheal disease consultant for the World Health Organization in Southeast Asia.

Currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF, Dr. Daniels is a principal investigator for a multidisciplinary research team and concentrates on research questions that have policy relevance, particularly improving healthcare for racial and ethnic minority groups, preventing foodborne diseases, increasing adult immunization rates, and preventing prostate cancer. His research goals are to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in access to and the delivery of preventive healthcare services, and to establish a collaborative partnership model between universities and community-based organizations for health education.

Monica Gandhi MD, MPH

Dr Gandhi completed her M.D. at Harvard Medical School, her residency training in Internal Medicine at UCSF in 1996, followed by a fellowship in Infectious Diseases and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS), UCSF. She obtained an MPH from Berkeley in 2001 with a focus on Epidemiology and Biostatistics and has been a faculty member at UCSF since 2003.

Dr. Gandhi is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Divisions of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Diseases at UCSF, and is the Director of the AIDS Consult Service at San Francisco General Hospital. She serves as an HIV and primary care provider in the Women’s HIV Program at Parnassus, a multidisciplinary specialty clinic for HIV-infected women in San Francisco. Her research efforts have focused on HIV/AIDS in U.S. women through the Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), a large multi-site, prospective cohort study established in 1994 to study the natural history, clinical and laboratory findings of HIV in women. Her particular research is on differences between men and women in terms of antiretroviral exposure and finding low-cost solutions to measuring antiretroviral levels in resource-poor settings, such as determining drug levels in hair samples. Dr. Gandhi has also participated in research efforts involving the impact of HIV/AIDS in women in India.

Dr. Gandhi co-directs the public health section of the Immunity, Inflammation and Infection (I-3) course for UCSF medical students. She is also a guest lecturer in the Behavioral and Policy Science in HIV Treatment and Prevention course at the Berkeley School of Public Health. She travels to India regularly to perform clinical training in HIV management for residents and physicians in Bangalore and Mumbai.

Judith Hahn, PhD, MA

Dr. Hahn, Assistant Professor, received her PhD in Epidemiology and her MA in Biostatistics from UC Berkeley. She joined the faculty at UCSF in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine in 2005.

Dr. Hahn’s research has focused on the effect of alcohol consumption on the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. She has been the PI on studies examining whether alcohol consumption is a barrier to HIV care and antiretroviral therapy and if alcohol consumption is associated with HIV treatment failure. She has conducted an NIAAA funded study to develop novel measures of alcohol consumption and to validate several non-oxidative metabolites of alcohol consumption as potential biomarkers. Dr. Hahn has also conducted studies to examine the transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in injecting drug users and is currently funded by NIDA to use mathematical modeling to examine potential intervention strategies to reduce the spread of the HCV in injecting drug users.

Dr. Hahn enjoys teaching and mentoring. For several years she has assisted with the International Traineeship in AIDS Prevention Studies program, serving as a primary mentor and as a workshop leader.

James G. Kahn, MD, MPH

Dr Kahn received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY) and his MPH from UC Berkeley. He completed a residency in Preventive Medicine from UC Berkeley, an International Health Fellowship for CDC and the Ministry of Health, Central African Republic, and a fellowship at the Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS), UCSF. Dr. Kahn, is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and in IHPS, and has been with UCSF since 1991.

He is particularly interested in the cost effectiveness of HIV prevention and has served as consultant to WHO, Pepfar, IOM and the World Bank on this topic. Dr Kahn’s research in this area has been in Africa ( Kenya, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Uganda), Russia, India and Mexico. Funding for his research projects has been granted by the CDC, NIH, the Gates Foundation and the Axios Foundation.

Dr Kahn is also interested in health care financing, administrative costs, health care reform, epidemic modeling and program evaluation. He is the President-designee of the California Physicians’ Alliance.

Amy Levi, MSN, PhD

Dr. Levi received her MSN and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She is Associate Clinical Professor in the Ob/Gyn and Reproductive Sciences Department and is Co-Director of the Interdepartmental Nurse-Midwifery/Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner Education Program. Dr Levi is the PI on a HRSA educational grant to expand the nursing program to students in rural areas through the use of educational technology resources. She is also responsible for ensuring curriculum content to support Spanish language proficiency and an understanding of issues of rural health and health disparities.

Dr. Levi initiated a group independent study for nurse-midwifery students to participate in the provision of clinical services in San Lucas Toliman, Solola, Guatemala. She has provided curriculum consultation at Mzuzu University in Mzuzu, Malawi, and currently consults for the midwifery program at Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, and for the American College of Nurse-Midwives project in international midwifery educational program support.

She supervises and precepts nurse-midwifery and medical students in labor and delivery and at antepartum clinics at San Francisco General Hospital, and in the Women’s Clinic at Mt. Zion. Dr. Levi coordinates a service learning practicum for students in agencies that work to reduce health disparities.

Her current research is focused on elements of decision-making during the perinatal period with an emphasis on identifying cultural differences in women’s approaches to decision-making regarding genetic screening. Her publications address issues of clinical education that impact on the quality of health care for women in the United States and abroad.

Sarah Macfarlane, MSc, FFPH

Sarah Macfarlane received her MSc from the London School of Economics and her FFPH from the Royal College of Physicians in the UK. She is the Director of Program Development and Planning for Global Health Sciences at UCSF, and Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She leads UCSF partnership with Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania, coordinates the Bellagio Essential Surgery Group, and is Director of The Global Health Sciences Forum.

Sarah brings wide geographic experience to her teaching having worked in several African countries and in the Mekong region of South East Asia. For many years, she taught masters students at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine where she was a reader in epidemiology and statistics. Prior to joining UCSF four years ago, she served as Associate Director of Health Equity at the Rockefeller Foundation.

Stephen F. Morin, PhD

Dr. Morin is a Professor of Medicine, and Chief of the Division of Prevention Science in the Department of Medicine. He is Director of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) and the AIDS Policy Research Center (APRC). He is also Associate Director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research (CFAR).

From 1992-1997, Dr. Morin was principal legislative assistant to Representative Nancy Pelosi, and worked for the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, which funds most of the federal response to AIDS. He also chaired the Presidential Transition Team for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Dr. Morin is a past president of the California Psychological Association and has served on 15 boards and committees within the American Psychological Association, including the Board of Directors.

Since returning to UCSF in 1997, Dr. Morin has developed an active program of research on AIDS policy. At the state level, he has led projects to evaluate local HIV prevention programs and the acceptability of the HIV surveillance systems and to recommend structural changes to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP). At the national level, he completed a study for HRSA to better understand racial and ethnic disparities in access to federally funded HIV medications and to assess the prevalence and type of Prevention with Positives services offered at Ryan White CARE Act-funded clinics.

Dr. Morin is currently PI of the Zimbabwe site for NIMH Project Accept: a phase III randomized controlled trial of community mobilization, mobile testing, same-day results, and post-test support for HIV in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Thailand.

Kimberly Page, PhD, MPH

Dr. Page (previously Dr. Page-Shafer), an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Division of Preventive Medicine and Public Health received her undergraduate degree in painting and fine arts at U.C. Santa Barbara. She migrated to public health research after obtaining an M.S at North Texas University. She completed her MPH (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) and Ph.D. (Epidemiology) at U.C. Berkeley. She holds joint appointments in the Department of Medicine, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS), at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center (SFVAMC) Department of Medicine, Gastroenterology division, and in the Dept. of Orofacial Sciences at the School of Dentistry at UCSF. Her expertise is the epidemiology and prevention of HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections.

Dr. Page has conducted research internationally in Brazil, Cambodia and Thailand. She has mentored scientists from many additional countries, including Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Thailand, and Vietnam. Her current research includes a prospective study of young women in Cambodia working in the entertainment and service industry. She leads a group that is studying HIV, HPV, amphetamine-type substance use and cultural factors in Phnom Phen. In San Francisco she leads a large multidisciplinary study of acute and incident HCV infection in a cohort of young street-based drug users, the UFO Study, which is investigating the epidemiology of acute HCV, immunological correlates of clearance, HCV infectivity, and treatment feasibility. Her research involves successful multidisciplinary expertise, and cross-cultural collaborations.

Dr. Page has been a faculty leader with the International Training programs, offered through Global Health Sciences, Prevention and Public Health Group, and CAPS. She is active in training and mentoring international researchers and scientists from developing countries, including from South America, Asia and Africa. She enjoys serving on the Institutional Review Board for the UCSF Committee for Human Research, where she has an opportunity to review and consider ethical issues in many internationally based research protocols. Dr. Page has authored and co-authored over 80 scientific publications in HIV and HCV epidemiology.

Philip J. Rosenthal, MD

Dr. Rosenthal received his BS in Biochemistry from SUNY at Stony Brook and his medical degree from New York University. He completed his medical residency at the University of Michigan, followed by an Infectious Diseases Fellowship at UCSF. He joined the faculty at UCSF in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases in 1988, and he is now a Professor in the Department.

Dr. Rosenthal was a consultant for the World Health Organization early in his career, working with the Program on AIDS in Malawi. Recently, he has been the Director of the Innovative Translational Collaboration program of the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). He is also a member of the Biomedical Sciences Graduate program. Dr. Rosenthal serves on numerous university committees, has participated on many study sections of the NIH and other research funders, and is currently a member of the World Health Organization Tropical Disease Research Expert Drug Discovery Advisory Committee .

Dr. Rosenthal’s research interests are focused on multiple aspects of malaria, including the biochemistry of malaria parasites, antimalarial drug discovery, and clinical and translational studies of antimalarial drug efficacy and resistance in Africa. Basic science studies center on the characterization of a family of proteases that play a key role in the parasite life cycle. Drug discovery work includes collaborations with a number of chemistry groups to develop new antimalarial drugs, in particular inhibitors of proteases. Translational work in Uganda and Burkina Faso includes randomized trials of new antimalarial therapies, evaluations of malaria in cohorts of children, evaluations of HIV-malaria co-infection, studies of new malaria diagnostic strategies, evaluations of drug pharmacokinetics, and the longitudinal assessment of the impacts of host genetics, parasite genetics, antimalarial immunity, and epidemiological factors on the incidence of malaria.

Dr. Rosenthal was the recipient of a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award. His work has also been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, and Medicines for Malaria Venture. He has published over 180 scientific articles and book chapters on malaria and tropical diseases.

George W. Rutherford, MD, MPH

Dr. Rutherford, educated at Stanford University and Duke University School of Medicine, is board certified in pediatrics and general preventive medicine and public health. He is the Salvatore Pablo Lucia Professor of Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine and Pediatrics, Director of the Institute for Global Health, and Head of the Division of Preventive Medicine and Public Health in and Vice Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF. He is also Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology and Health Administration at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Rutherford has worked primarily in public health, with emphasis on the epidemiology and control of communicable diseases. He has held many positions in public health agencies, including serving as State Health Officer and State Epidemiologist for California, Director of the AIDS Office for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Director of Immunizations for the New York City Department of Health and an EIS Officer at CDC. He has been in academic epidemiology and public health since 1995.

Dr. Rutherford’s research interests include the epidemiology and control of HIV infection, especially in the developing world, the prevention of coccidioidomycosis, STD control, pediatric vaccination policy, the role of public health in managed care, evidence-based public health practice, the epidemiology and control of tuberculosis, emerging infectious diseases and bioterrorism. He has a special interest in meta-analysis and serves as the Coordinating Editor of the Cochrane Collaboration’s HIV/AIDS Group. He is also Principal Investigator of the University Technical Assistance Program with CDC and works in collaboration with CDC’s Global AIDS Program on projects in Angola, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda and Vietnam. He is an advisor to the World Health Organization and the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV and AIDS, and is Vice Chair of the HIV Knowledge Hub for the European Regional of WHO, based at the University of Zagreb in Croatia.

Dr. Rutherford currently chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Epidemiology and the California Tuberculosis Elimination Advisory Committee, has served on several recent Institute of Medicine committees and is currently a member of the Committee on Methodologic Challenges in HIV Prevention Research Trials.

James P. Seward, MD, MPP, MMM

Dr. Seward received his medical degree as well as completed residencies in Internal Medicine and Occupational Medicine at UCSF. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Preventive Medicine (Occupational Medicine) and completed a Masters in Medical Management at Tulane University. Dr. Seward also holds a Masters in Public Policy from UCB. He is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF and Clinical Professor of Public Health at UCB and co-directs the Joint UCSF-UCB Preventive Medicine Residency. He also teaches occupational and environmental medicine at the UCB School of Public Health and serves as Chair of the UCSF Occupational Medicine Residency Advisory Committee.

Dr Seward was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and a Fulbright Scholar. He is a Fellow of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the American College of Preventive Medicine, and the American College of Physician Executives. Dr. Seward is also the Medical Director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he directs the Occupational Medicine Program.

Dr Seward recently worked in primary health care development in Russia and Azerbaijan. His focus has been on the development of community-oriented primary care and on the incorporation of preventive health services into the clinical model. Occupational and environmental health in the global arena is another of Dr. Seward’s interests. He has also worked on health issues in Nicaragua and Mexico and has studied in Argentina.

Molly Sutphen, MS, PhD

Dr. Sutphen received her bachelor’s degree in physical anthropology from Brown University. She attended Duke University to study functional morphology, paleontology, and primate anatomy, completing a master’s thesis on eugenics and paleontology in American society during the Progressive Era. She received her PhD from Yale University and studied the history of public health in the British Empire. Her PhD thesis was on the reception of laboratory medicine in public health practice in Aberdeen, Calcutta, Cape Town, and Hong Kong. In 1991 she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to London, where she stayed until 1996, finishing her PhD research. In 1994 Dr. Sutphen was awarded a Wellcome Trust Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Department of Anatomy, University College, London. In 1996 she was awarded the J. Elliott Royer Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, in the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine, at UCSF, where she focused her research on the evolution of international health organizations and cooperation in international health.

In 2002, Dr Sutphen began research in health policy, with a study on affirmative action and diversity in American medical education. Policy recommendations to federal and state authorities, medical schools, foundations, and professional and trade associations resulted from this research. As a post-doctoral fellow and as an adjunct faculty member, she spent many years teaching the history of medicine to medical, pharmacy, nursing, graduate, and dental students. Dr. Sutphen also taught first and second year medical students in UCSF’s School of Medicine and courses in ethics to master’s students enrolled in UCSF’s School of Nursing.

In 2004, Dr. Sutphen began a study on nursing education for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The study is part of a five year initiative on the preparation for careers in the law, the clergy, engineering, medicine, and nursing. One purpose of the study is to analyze across disciplines how institutions develop skills, integrity, and professional understanding in those they train and educate. She co-authored the book, Educating Nurses: Teaching and Learning a Complex, Caring Practice, to be released in 2009.

Stephanie Taché, MD, MPH

Dr Taché received her medical degree from UCLA and her masters in public health in population and international health from Harvard University. She completed her residency in Family and Community Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, where she is now an Assistant Professor.

Dr. Taché completed a fellowship in Health Services Research at UCSF and spent two years working and living in Tanzania as the Health Systems Strengthening Officer for UCSF’s Global Health Sciences Department. Her research interests include the health workforce, primary care systems strengthening, and the HIV epidemic in Africa. She published several articles related to academic capacity building to address the workforce shortage in Africa.

Dr. Taché has obtained funding from the Center for Disease Control to work on projects in Tanzania and Rwanda and was awarded the New Investigator in Global Health by the Global Health Council in 2007. Her clinical practice is based at the San Francisco General Hospital Urgent Care Center focusing on the urban underserved.

John L. Ziegler, MD, MSc.

Dr. Ziegler received a BA in English Literature from Amherst College and an M.D. from Cornell University Medical College. He undertook medical residency training at Bellevue and Memorial-Sloan-Kettering Hospitals in New York City. Joining the National Cancer Institute in 1966, he embarked on a long career in cancer research. He was the founding Director of the Uganda Cancer Institute in 1967 and after five years of research, teaching and clinical work in Uganda he was honored by the Albert and Mary Lasker Award in 1972 for improving the cure rate of Burkitt’s lymphoma. During the 1970s he was Chief of Pediatric Oncology and later Director of Clinical Oncology at the National Cancer Institute.

In 1981, Dr. Ziegler joined UCSF as Professor of Medicine in Residence and Chief of Staff for Education at the VA Hospital. Here, he participated in the early research on the AIDS epidemic, being among the first to show an association with malignant lymphoma and Kaposi’s sarcoma. In 1985, Dr. Ziegler directed the UCSF AIDS Clinical Research Center and made many scientific contributions in the area of HIV-associated malignancies, both in the USA and in Uganda. He consulted with the World Health Organization in 1994-96 and in 1997 earned a masters degree in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Over the past ten years, Dr. Ziegler has directed the UCSF Cancer Risk Program at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, now one of the leading genetic counseling and testing centers for hereditary cancer in northern California. Starting in 2007, he was named Interim Director of the Global Health Sciences Graduate Program, crafting a curriculum for a new masters degree in global health at UCSF. Dr. Ziegler has authored over 240 scientific articles, chapters and reviews and is the recipient of numerous awards that honor his work in cancer and global health.