Vanessa Bradford Kerry (born December 31, 1976) is an American physician, public health expert, and advocate. She is a founder of the non-profit Seed Global Health, director of the Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, and serves as the Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health for the World Health Organization (WHO).
While in medical school, she interned with the Vaccine Fund of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and conducted a study on immunization in Ghana.[4] She later studied and advised on government relations for health and development in Rwanda in partnership with Partners in Health.[5]
Career
Kerry completed her internal medicine residency and critical care fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She is now a physician specializing in critical care. Kerry has continued work in global health and has collaborated on projects in Haiti and Rwanda through the Harvard Medical School Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. She has worked on public sector partnerships in Uganda, Malawi, Zambia and Sierra Leone through Seed Global Health and supports education and public policy at the MGH Center for Global Health.[6] Kerry also serves as director of the Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change and is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.[7]
Active in global health for many years, in 2011 Kerry started the non-profit Seed Global Health. Seed's flagship program was the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP),[8] a partnership with the Peace Corps. The Partnership sent health professionals abroad to work as medical and nursing educators and to help build capacity. With the Peace Corps through GHSP, Seed helped send over 191 physician and nurse educators to train more than 16,000 health professionals in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2018, Seed launched a new strategy, Sharing Knowledge, Saving Lives.[9] The program is currently active in Malawi, Uganda, Sierra-Leone, and Zambia and has trained almost 40,000 health workers in seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in total.[10]
In 2010, Kerry wrote an op-ed on the idea of sending American health professionals to teach for The New York Times.[11] She has also published in the New England Journal of Medicine[12] and The Lancet on the topic.[13] The program also partners with academic medical centers such as the Massachusetts General Hospital and the MGH Center for Global Health. In 2013, Kerry, as CEO was named a Draper Richards Kaplan Social Entrepreneur.[14] In 2014, she was featured in Boston Magazine's Power of Ideas for her work with the organization.[15] In 2015, she earned an Honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Northeastern University.[16] In 2016, she was named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.[17]
Seed's work has promoted the need for a strong workforce and health systems for better health, economic growth, security and wellbeing. In 2021, Seed started promoting the connection between and health and climate change at the Conference of the parties 26.[18]
Kerry is the Director of the Program in Global Public Policy at the Mass General Center for Global Health and spearheads the program in Global Public Policy and Social Change at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and serves on its faculty.[19]
In June 2023, Kerry was appointed as the first Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health at the World Health Organization (WHO). At WHO, Kerry's responsibilities including raising awareness of the impact of climate change on health, helping to mobilize resources to advance the work of WHO, and to advance high-level advocacy.[20]
Personal life
On October 10, 2009 in Boston, Kerry married neurosurgeon Brian Vala Nahed, who specializes in brain tumors and spinal disorders.[21] As a surgeon and scientist, Nahed leads a research lab, which aims to develop the first blood test for brain tumors.[22][23] They have a son born in 2012 and a daughter born in 2015.[24][25]
Advocacy
Dr. Kerry delivers remarks at the International Women of Courage Award Ceremony at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 2014
Kerry took a leave from her medical studies in order to campaign for her father's, then SenatorJohn Kerry, presidential bid in 2004, even introducing him at that year's Democratic National Convention. She campaigned by herself and with her sister, mostly focusing on campaign stops at university campuses. She made speeches in support of her father and focused on health care issues and tuition costs for students, two Democratic campaign issues she felt personally attached to.[26] She also appeared with Alexandra on the MTV Music Video Awards show in Miami where she joined George W. Bush's daughters Barbara and Jenna, who were campaigning for their father George W. Bush, to encourage youth and citizen voting. Jenna later confirmed that Barbara and Jenna also developed a friendship with John Kerry's daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa.[27] Through her work with her father and her public health policy education, she has not ruled out running for political office in the future.[28]
↑ Kerry, Vanessa Bradford (February 13, 2010). "And One for Doctors, Too". The New York Times. Retrieved May 6, 2019.
↑ Bradford Kerry, Vanessa; Auld, Sara; Farmer, Paul (September 23, 2010). "An International Service Corps for Health — An Unconventional Prescription for Diplomacy". New England Journal of Medicine. 363 (13): 1199–1201. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1006501. ISSN0028-4793. PMID20860500.
Alexandra Forbes Kerry is an American actress and filmmaker. She is a partner at Locomotive Films and co-founder of Fictional Pictures, a film production company based in New York and Los Angeles. She is married to contemporary art curator Julien Dobbs-Higginson and they have two daughters named Isabelle and Allegra.
Massachusetts General Hospital is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, Harvard University located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Hospital houses the world's largest hospital-based research program, the Mass General Research Institute, with an annual research budget of more than $1.2 billion in 2021. It is the third-oldest general hospital in the United States with a patient capacity of 999 beds. Along with Brigham and Women's Hospital, Mass General is a founding member of Mass General Brigham, formerly known as Partners HealthCare, the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts.
Barbara Pierce Bush is an American activist. She co-founded and is the chair of the board of the nonprofit organization Global Health Corps. She and her fraternal twin sister, Jenna, are the daughters of the forty-third U.S. president, George W. Bush, and former first lady Laura Bush. She is also a granddaughter of former president George H. W. Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush, after whom she is named.
Carola Blitzman Eisenberg was an Argentine-American psychiatrist who became the first woman to hold the position of Dean of Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1978 to 1990, she was the dean of student affairs at Harvard Medical School (HMS). She was a long-time lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at HMS. She was also both a founding member of Physicians for Human Rights and an honorary psychiatrist with the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. After retiring, she was involved in human rights work through Physicians for Human Rights, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and elsewhere. She turned 100 in September 2017 and died in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in March 2021 at the age of 103.
Joia Stapleton Mukherjee is an associate professor with the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Since 2000, she has served as the Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health, an international medical non-profit founded by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Kim. She trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Mukherjee has been involved in health care access and human rights issues since 1989, and she consults for the World Health Organization on the treatment of HIV and MDR-TB in developing countries. Her scholarly work focuses on the human rights aspect of HIV treatment and on the implementation of complex health interventions in resource-poor settings.
Diana Chapman Walsh was President of Wellesley College from 1993 to 2007. During her tenure, the college revised its curriculum and expanded its programs in global education, internships and service learning, and interdisciplinary teaching and learning. The faculty established new majors in environmental studies, quantitative reasoning, cinema and media studies, neurosciences, and astrophysics. Japanese, Arabic and Korean languages were added to the curriculum as well, and a new department of East Asian Languages and Literatures was launched.
Margaret Ann "Peggy" Hamburg is an American physician and public health administrator, who is serving as the chair of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and co-chair of the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP). She served as the 21st Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from May 2009 to April 2015.
Sue J. Goldie is an American physician and scientist who is recognized for her contributions to public health and decision science.
Yvette Roubideaux is an American doctor and public health administrator. She is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota.
Seed Global Health, formerly known as Global Health Service Corps, is a non-profit organization started in 2011 which helps to provide nursing and medical training support in resource-limited countries. Seed Global Health collaborates with the Peace Corps to create the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP). This program has established the first "Peace Corps for doctors and nurses". Since launch, GHSP has had 97 volunteers train more than 8,300 students in 5 African countries.
Kari C. Nadeau is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health and John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies. She is adjunct professor at Stanford University in the Department of Pediatrics and the co-chair of the Medical Societies Consortium for Climate Change and Health. She practices Allergy, Asthma, Immunology in children and adults. She has published over 400+ papers, many in the field of climate change and health. Her team focuses on quantifying health outcomes of solutions as they pertain climate change mitigation and adaptation at the local, regional, country, and global levels. Dr. Nadeau, with a team of individuals and patients and families, has been able to help major progress and impact in the clinical fields of immunology, infection, asthma, and allergy. Dr. Nadeau is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the U.S. EPA Children’s Health Protection Committee.
Michelle Ann Williams is a Jamaican-American epidemiologist, public health scientist, and educator who has served as the dean of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health since 2016.
Joan Y. Reede is an American physician. She is Harvard Medical School's inaugural dean for diversity and community partnership in the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Partnership. She is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She is known for creating programs that mentor and support minority physicians and female physicians. Alumni of her programs have created a 501(c)(3) organization called The Reede Scholars in her honor.
Eve Elizabeth Slater is an American physician who served as the United States Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2003. Slater received her B.A from Vassar College in 1967 and M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1971. She completed residency in internal medicine and fellowship in cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA.In 1976, she was appointed the Chief Resident in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, the first woman to appointed to this position. Dr. Slater is currently Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S), where she has taught for over 35 years. She is board certified in internal medicine and cardiology and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology.(FACC). At MGH, she led the Hypertension Unit, as Assistant Professor of Medicine. Harvard Medical School.
Lisa I. Iezzoni is an American medical researcher with expertise in health policy. She is a professor at Harvard Medical School, as well as the director of the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is known for her research on health disparities among people with disabilities.
Ida Maud Cannon was an American social worker, who was Chief of Social Service at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1914 to 1945.
Fitzhugh Mullan was an American physician, writer, educator, and social activist. He participated in the founding of the Student Health Organization, the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, Seed Global Health, and the Beyond Flexner Alliance. Mullan was a professor of Health Policy and Management and of Pediatrics at the George Washington University and the George Washington University Health Workforce Institute, now renamed the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity. He was an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Renee N. Salas is an American medical doctor who is an attending physician in Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, and the Yerby Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She was previously the Burke Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute, where she remains one of the Affiliated Faculty.
Valerie Ellen Stone is an American physician who is a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School. She serves as Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital. She specializes in the management of HIV/AIDS, health disparities and improving the quality of medical education.
Michelle Evelyn Morse is an American internist. She is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital and co-founded EqualHealth and Social Medicine Consortium. In 2021, Morse was named the first Chief Medical Officer of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
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