Meet the Team

The leaders of Mount Sinai Global Health are world-renowned medical professionals, who draw on many years of experience to forge new programs in global health.

Dean for Global Health

Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, the Ethel H. Wise Professor and Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics, and Director of Mount Sinai’s Children’s Environmental Health Center, is Mount Sinai’s Dean for Global Health. Dr. Landrigan is an internationally recognized pediatrician, epidemiologist, and expert in public health and preventive medicine. He has devoted his career to protecting children against environmental threats to health. He leads the New York/Northern New Jersey Study center of National Children’s Study, the largest study of children’s health and the environment ever launched in the United States.

Associate Dean for Global Health

Jagat Narula, MD, PhD; Philip J. and Harriet L. Goodhart Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), and Associate Dean for Global Health at MSSM is also the Director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Program in the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Cardiovascular Health. Dr. Narula is a nationally and internationally renowned physician-scientist who has contributed immensely to the development of imaging strategies for the identification of patients likely to get heart attacks and those likely to develop symptomatic heart failure, with a focus on prevention.

Research Directors

Cancer
Paolo Boffetta, MD, MPH, a distinguished epidemiologist and deputy director of Icahn School of Medicine’s Tisch Cancer Institute, will spearhead efforts to study and combat cancer, which, like cardiovascular disease, has sharply increased in the developing world.

Cardiology
Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, is Director of Mount Sinai Heart and is a former president of the American Heart Association and the World Heart Federation. Dr. Fuster will expand upon his pioneering efforts at Mount Sinai Heart to curb the spread of cardiovascular and related illnesses in developing countries, which are on the rise as Western eating habits supplant traditional fish-and-vegetable-based diets.

Environmental and Occupational Disease, Children’s Environmental Health
Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc. In addition to his administrative duties, Dr. Landrigan and Dr. Luz Claudio will continue the work begun by Mount Sinai’s Department of Preventive Medicine to train leaders in occupational and environmental medicine in several Latin American nations. Dr. Landrigan will also expand upon his work with the World Health Organization to provide training in children’s environmental health and to develop major epidemiologic studies of children’s health, similar to the US National Children’s Study.

Infectious Disease
Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, PhD, Professor of Microbiology and Medicine (in Infectious Diseases) and the Fischberg Chair in Medicine at Mount Sinai, will undertake a concerted effort to fight infectious diseases. His work focuses on three major areas:

• Emerging infectious diseases. Dr. Garcia-Sastre is the Director of Mount Sinai’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute (GHEPI), which studies and combats infectious diseases, and the pathogens that cause them.
• HIV/AIDS. Dr. Garcia-Sastre currently directs a program that is training future leaders in infectious disease in Argentina.
• Tropical medicine. Dr. Garcia-Sastre works with alongside Drs. Natasha Anandaraja, Ramin Asgary, Daniel Caplivski, and Nils Hennig to teach and mentor both medical students and residents in global health within Mount Sinai’s Department of Medical Education.

Education Directors

Global Education Programs
Natasha Anandaraja, MBBS, MPH, Ramin Asgary, MD, Luz Claudio, PhD, Sigrid Hahn, MD, Nils Hennig, MD, Dorothy Indyk, MD, Mary M. McKay, MD, and Jonathan Ripp, MD, direct the global education program of Mount Sinai Global Health. With support from the Mulago Foundation, Mount Sinai’s Global Health Training Center has been educating medical students, residents, faculty, and fellows in global health since 2005. The Global Health Training Center has sent trainees of all levels to work with partners around the world on public health and research projects. Projects have spanned malaria control in Tanzania, the heath impact of water privatization in Bolivia, and the creation of community health curricula for Native American students in North Dakota. The projects have sparked interest in global health throughout the medical school and medical center.

Human Rights Director

Holly Atkinson, MD, FACP,is Director of the Human Rights Program for the Mount Sinai Global Health Center and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, where she co-directs the Advancing Idealism in Medicine Program, along with Dr. Jon Ripp. She serves as faculty advisor to the Human Rights and Social Justice Scholars Program and the Physicians for Human Right student chapter at Mount Sinai. While working in Indonesia during her medical internship at the University of Rochester’s Strong Memorial Hospital, Dr. Atkinson became interested in global health and social justice. She subsequently became involved with Physicians for Human Rights, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, serving on its board for more than 16 years, including four years as its president. Her particular focus is on the intersection of health and human rights, especially as it applies to advancing the health of women and girls. 

Patient Care Directors

Emergency Medicine
Andy S. Jagoda, MD, FACEP, Director of Mount Sinai Medical Center’s Emergency Medicine Department, and Professor and Chair in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine, is nationally recognized for his involvement in emergency medicine education and for his work in the areas of neurologic emergencies. He will be extending his department’s efforts in places such as Liberia, where he has been involved in a collaborative research and education project offering much-needed clinical service and health worker training in a country with minimal health resources. Mount Sinai Global Health will also continue the Medical Center’s emergency medical relief work in Haiti.

Maternal and Child Health
Ramon J.C. Murphy, MD has years of experience in pediatric medicine directed towards underserved communities in the United States and overseas. Among his many initiatives, he has been involved in international research and public health projects dealing with pediatric lead poisoning in Uganda, pediatric nutrition in Sri Lanka, adolescent anemia and newborn mortality in India, HIV education in Tanzania, and neonatal care, malnutrition and pediatric HIV, and pediatric clinical training in Liberia.

Mental Health
Craig L. Katz, MD is a specialist in international mental health, focusing on post-trauma care for survivors of natural disaster and conflict, torture survivors, and refugees. Under their direction, Mount Sinai Global Health will treat patients and train health care providers in these areas.

Surgery
Celia M. Divino, MD, FACS and Michael Marin, MD, Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Mount Sinai, are strong supporters of global surgical service. Under their leadership, all senior surgical residents have participated in a month-long surgical rotation in the Dominican Republic and a number of Mount Sinai surgeons and anesthesiologists have traveled to underserved communities overseas to perform surgeries that would not have otherwise been available. Drs. Marin and Divino plan to continue their global surgical efforts under the auspices of Mount Sinai Global Health.

Women’s Health
Michael Brodman, MD, Director of Gynecology at Mount Sinai, will continue his vitally important work in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, where his medical teams have corrected fistulas and other disabling and disfiguring gynecologic conditions in women who would otherwise be doomed to lifetimes of exile and ostracism. He and his teams offer obstetric and gynecologic clinical care and training in order to improve women’s health and rates of newborn survival.