Our team includes a diverse group of highly trained and experienced physicians.
Nita Avrith, MD, MPH, is Fellowship Director and an attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West. She completed her residency training at the University of South Florida, followed by a fellowship in Global Health at Mount Sinai. During her fellowship, she earned a Master of Public Health with a focus in epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and worked on projects in the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Tanzania. Her current focus is on building nursing capacity at Bugando Medical Center in Mwanza, Tanzania by delivering the WHO BEC courses via a train-the-trainer model and collaborating with the Beth Israel Philips School of Nursing to support best practice nursing care through simulation and mentorship.
Jamie Eliades, MD, MPH, is an emergency medicine physician and Co-Director of the Global Health Division as well as Assistant Clinical Professor at the Arnhold Institute in the Department of Global Health. He has more than 20 years of experience working globally in emergency health systems development, humanitarian response, and malaria control and prevention. He received his MPH from Johns Hopkins University, and completed the Epidemic Intelligence Service Fellowship at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Division of Parasitic Diseases. He has held positions with WHO, CDC, United States Agency for International Development, PATH, and PSI. He has spent seven years on faculty in the Department of Population and Family Health, Program on Forced Migration and Health, at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, teaching field epidemiology and program planning. From 2017 to 2019 he lived in Myanmar as the technical lead on a regional Gates-funded malaria elimination initiative.
Dinali Fernando, MD, MPH, is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of the Libertas Center for Human Rights at Elmhurst Hospital. The Libertas Center provides trauma-focused, longitudinal medical, mental health, social, and legal services to survivors of severe human rights abuses and torture. Dr. Fernando has advocated at local, state, national, and international levels—including the United Nations, to address the needs of torture survivors. She is a graduate of the Mount Sinai Global Health Program, where she is now faculty. She is also on the faculty at the Human Rights and Social Justice Program and the Mount Sinai Chapter of Medical Students for Haiti.
Darlene R. House, MD, MSCR, is a graduate of Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine and graduate of IU's combined residency in emergency medicine and pediatrics. After residency, Dr. House completed a Global Health Fellowship and Masters in Clinical Research, with a focus on rehydration of children with diarrheal illness. In partnership with the IU-Kenya Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare program, Dr. House helped with emergency medicine development and research activities in Kenya. In 2015, Dr. House accepted an opportunity in Nepal to help support an emergency medicine fellowship training program at Patan Hospital through Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS), one of the first EM programs in Nepal. Dr. House helped with development and support of the EM program. Having graduated a dozen EM physicians, the program is fully integrated and managed by PAHS. While in Nepal, Dr. House noticed a larger burden of pneumonia in all populations and transitioned her research work to application of lung ultrasound for pediatric pneumonia. Dr. House leads Mount Sinai's global health partnership in Nepal with Dhulikhel Hospital and Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences. This institutional partnership provides opportunities for partnership across disciplines in care, education, and research.
Ben McVane, MD, is an Attending Physician and faculty member at Elmhurst Hospital. He completed his medical degree at Columbia University and emergency medicine residency at The Mount Sinai Hospital. Internationally, he has worked on health care projects and has provided clinical care in South Africa, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees camps in Greece and Bangladesh. Domestically, he works with the Libertas Center in Queens, providing medical affidavits for survivors of torture seeking asylum in the United States. He is interested in medical care provision for immigrant and refugee populations internationally and domestically.
John Rozehnal, MD, MS, graduated from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai with both an MD and an MS in clinical research. He completed his residency in emergency medicine at Mount Sinai, as well as a fellowship in administration and operations. Dr. Rozehnal works clinically and in operations at the Cheyenne River Health Center in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, a partnership between Mount Sinai and the Indian Health Services.
Elizabeth Singer, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Director of the Mount Sinai Human Rights Program, where asylum seekers who have suffered torture, human trafficking, and other human rights violations are medically and psychologically evaluated. She has been involved with Physicians for Human Rights, HEAL Trafficking, the American Civil Liberty Union’s National Prison Project, the New York University/Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture, and the Human Rights Clinic at HealthRight International, contributing both clinically and on policy projects. Dr. Singer’s human rights work influences her work in global health. In Cambodia, she worked with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Ministry of Health to empower community health workers to aid women with reproductive health decisions. In Tanzania, she serves as an expert medical advisor for a nongovernmental organization that addresses education and health inequalities in vulnerable children. Additionally, she has worked on improving access to health care in Peru, India, and Nepal. Dr. Singer completed her MPH at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, with a certificate in Public Health and Humanitarian Assistance. At the Icahn School of Medicine, she teaches medical students about health and human rights.
Ramona Sunderwirth, MD, is the former Global Health Division Director, and an Assistant Professor of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. She earned a Master of Public Health at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Sunderwirth graduated from the University of Paris Medical School and did her residency training at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx. She has served on the Children’s Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch, and is on the Health Rights International Board of Directors and Program Committee. She has worked and volunteered with many international nongovernmental organization projects in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Rwanda, Iraq, Macedonia, Kosovo, Russia, Philippines, Nepal, Kenya, and Tanzania. She worked with International Medical Corps in Sierra Leone during the ebola epidemic, and has provided infection prevention and control training to health personnel in Sierra Leone. She works as an educator and clinician at the Lao Friends Hospital for Children in Luang Prabang, Laos, and as an educator with the Tanzanian nursing project.
Deepti Thomas-Paulose, MD, is an Attending in emergency medicine at Mount Sinai West. She is a graduate of the International Emergency Medicine Fellowship at Columbia University and has completed a Master’s in Public Health from the Mailman School of Public Health. She has participated in public health projects in Gujarat, India, and Blantyre, Malawi. She has given lectures in infectious disease and epidemiology. During her medical school training, she worked on a project that focused on the pediatric HIV population in South Africa. Prior to this, she worked in Kenya, Nicaragua, and Mexico on health-related projects. She leads the division’s work in the Dominican Republic.
Benjamin Wyler, MD, received a BA and BS from Stanford University and earned his MD and MPH from Harvard. He completed his residency in emergency medicine at Los Angeles County-University of Southern California and did a fellowship in international emergency medicine at Stony Brook University. He holds a Certificate of Knowledge in Clinical Tropical Medicine and Travelers’ Health from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dr. Wyler joined Mount Sinai in 2019 in the Global Health Division, where he works with GeoSentinel, an international surveillance network for traveler health, as Co-site Director for New York West and Deputy Chair of the Scientific Review Committee. He works on research related to COVID-19 and ED travel screening for the identification of infectious disease threats.