Nahid Bhadelia

Last updated
Nahid Bhadelia
Nahid Bhadelia lectures at FEMA Center for Domestic Preparedness (cropped).jpg
Bhadelia lectures students at the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Alabama in 2014
Alma mater Tufts University School of Medicine, MD
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, MALD
Tufts University, BS, 1999
Known forInfectious Disease Response
Scientific career
Fields Infectious Diseases, Health Security, Outbreak Preparedness
Institutions Boston Medical Center, Boston University School of Medicine

Nahid Bhadelia is an American infectious-diseases physician, founding director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research (CEID) at Boston University, and an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. [1] [2] She served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Global COVID-19 Response on the White House COVID-19 Response Team. [3] [4]

Contents

Education and early career

Bhadelia attended Tufts University, where she received her Bachelor of Science degree. She continued her education at Tufts University School of Medicine, where she received her Doctor of Medicine. [5] While in medical school, she served as an HIV/AIDS counselor and clinic coordinator for a student-run clinic that serves underserved populations in Malden, Massachusetts. [5]

Bhadelia also holds a Master's degree in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, specializing in health security with a focus on pandemic response. [6]

Career

In 1999, Bhadelia worked as the Director of National Outreach for Oxfam America, working on projects related to civic engagement of young Americans in voting and policy change issues. In 2002, she worked with Massachusetts Campus Compact on a project funded by Pew Charitable trusts to promote voting among college students. She completed her medical training in New York City at Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. [7]

In 2011, Bhadelia began working at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine. With a specialization in infection control and emerging pathogens, Bhadelia served as the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit. She was also the Director of Infection Control and an Associate Director at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, a biosafety level 4 laboratory, which is one of six such programs for studying deadly viruses in the United States. [8] During her career, she has worked on assessing the healthcare response to the 2009 flu pandemic that resulted from Influenza A virus subtype H1N1, the 2013-2016 Ebola virus epidemic, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. [9] She works on national task force for evaluation of experimental medical treatments for emerging infections. [10] On May 19, 2021, it was announced that Bhadelia will lead a new research center at Boston University entitled the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research (CEID). [1] CEID's mission is to improve resilience against threat of emerging & epidemic infectious diseases worldwide through transdisciplinary research, global and local capacity building, training, evidence generation for policy support, and community engagement. [11]

Role in Biocontainment Care and Special Pathogens Unit

Between 2011 and 2021, Bhadelia built from ground up and led a medical unit that specializes in the care of patients with highly communicable infectious diseases, serving as its medical director. She also served as the director of medical response to maximum containment research at NEIDL. The Special Pathogens Unit (SPU) is situated within Boston Medical Center (BMC), BU’s primary teaching hospital. Her work involved everything from engineering and infection control to training hundreds of associated healthcare workers, developing clinical care policies, and taking part in national conversations about development and stockpiling treatments for emerging diseases. [1]

Role during the West African Ebola Epidemic

During the Western African Ebola virus epidemic, which lasted from 2013 through 2016 Bhadelia worked with the World Health Organization and Partners In Health to address the epidemic on the ground and work as a physician in Ebola Treatment Units. She was deployed to Kenema, Sierra Leone to serve as a clinician in August 2014, in Port Loko in November 2014, and returned to Sierra Leone twice more in 2015. [12] [13] Bhadelia applied her first-hand experience to co-developing and co-authoring a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Safety Training Course for ebola virus disease healthcare workers. [14] She also applied her expertise in international affairs and policy to co-author a white paper on strategies to strengthen healthcare systems while responding to a health crisis in the wake of the ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. [15]

In the wake of the epidemic, Bhadelia has returned to West Africa to help set up research centers to study viruses such as Ebolavirus. [16] She is also the lead investigator on a John E. Fogarty International Center grant to establish a training program for Liberian researchers in emerging infectious diseases to build local capacity for research and treatment in the aftermath of the ebola epidemic. [17] She also has campaigned to raise funds for local healthcare workers fighting the ebola epidemic, many of whom have gone unpaid. [18] [19]

Role during the Ebola Outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo

Bhadelia serves as a clinical lead for the Joint Mobile Emerging Disease Intervention Clinical Capability (JMEDICC) program which is a joint US-Ugandan effort to create clinical research capacity to combat viral hemorrhagic fevers in Uganda, most recently related Ugandan response to the Ebola outbreak in 2018-2020 Democratic Republic of Congo. [20]  

Role during the COVID-19 Pandemic

On February 9, 2020, Bhadelia published an op-ed for The Atlantic warning about the burden of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare systems based on her experiences as a physician on the frontlines of past epidemics. [21] She called for the need for the international community to invest more in healthcare in the most vulnerable countries to maximize the likelihood of containing outbreaks. Even after COVID-19 reached the status of pandemic, Bhadelia continues to stress the importance of containment and mitigation strategies for healthcare workers, governments, and citizens, advocating also for the importance of COVID-19 testing in containing the virus. [22] [23] Bhadelia was one of the authors of the John Snow Memorandum, which points out that from evidence-based considerations a "pandemic management strategy relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed". [24]

Medical communication and advocacy

Bhadelia has published writing in outlets such as The Atlantic NPR , Science, Washington Post and Nature recounting her experiences as a frontline physician during the ebola epidemic, providing clinical insight on new technologies related to outbreak response, and relaying her expertise as an infectious disease expert in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Bhadelia has spoken about devastating role of stigma during outbreaks in a TedX talk. [25] She's also an NBC News Medical contributor. [23]

Selected writing for non-scientific audiences

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pandemic</span> Widespread, often global, epidemic of severe infectious disease

A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luciana Borio</span> Brazilian-American physician and public health administrator

Luciana Borio is a Brazilian-American infectious disease physician and public health administrator. She is a vice president at In-Q-Tel. She previously served as director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council, acting chief scientist of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), assistant commissioner for counterterrorism policy of the FDA, and director of FDA's Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats. She is known for her work advancing clinical trials, the development of medical countermeasures for health emergencies, and the public health responses to Ebola and Zika outbreaks.

Anne Walsh Rimoin is an American infectious disease epidemiologist whose research focuses on emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), particularly those that are crossing species from animal to human populations. She is a professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and Infectious Disease Division of the Geffen School of Medicine and is the Director of the Center for Global and Immigrant Health. She is an internationally recognized expert on the epidemiology of Ebola, human mpox, and disease emergence in Central Africa.

Dr. Daniel R. Lucey is an American physician, researcher, clinical professor of medicine of infectious diseases at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and a research associate in anthropology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where he has co-organised an exhibition on eight viral outbreaks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neil Ferguson (epidemiologist)</span> British epidemiologist and researcher

Neil Morris Ferguson is a British epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology, who specialises in the patterns of spread of infectious disease in humans and animals. He is the director of the Jameel Institute, and of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, and head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Vice-Dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Medicine, all at Imperial College London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dale Fisher</span> Australian physician (born 1960)

Dale Andrew Fisher FRACP is an infectious diseases physician who specialises in Infectious Diseases and a Senior Consultant in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the National University Hospital, Singapore. He is also a professor of medicine at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, and the chair of the National Infection Prevention and Control Committee through the Ministry of Health, Singapore. In 2020, he became group chief of Medicine for National University Health Systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Syra Madad</span> American pathogen preparedness expert

Syra Madad is an American pathogen preparedness expert and infectious disease epidemiologist. Madad is the Senior Director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals where she is part of the executive leadership team which oversees New York City's response to the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in the city's 11 public hospitals. She was featured in the Netflix documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak and the Discovery Channel documentary The Vaccine: Conquering COVID.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael J. Ryan (doctor)</span> Irish doctor and Chief Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme

Michael Joseph Ryan is an Irish epidemiologist and former trauma surgeon, specialising in infectious disease and public health. He is executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme, leading the team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19. Ryan has held leadership positions and has worked on various outbreak response teams in the field to eradicate the spread of diseases including bacillary dysentery, cholera, Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Marburg virus disease, measles, meningitis, relapsing fever, Rift Valley fever, SARS, and Shigellosis.

Maria DeJoseph Van Kerkhove is an American infectious disease epidemiologist. With a background in high-threat pathogens, Van Kerkhove specializes in emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and is based in the Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization (WHO). She is the technical lead of COVID-19 response and the head of emerging diseases and zoonosis unit at WHO.

Marylyn Martina Addo is a German infectiologist who is a Professor and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) Head of Infectious Disease at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Addo has developed and tested vaccinations that protect people from Ebola virus disease and the MERS coronavirus EMC/2012. She is currently developing a viral vector based COVID-19 vaccine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caitlin Rivers</span> American epidemiologist

Caitlin M. Rivers is an American epidemiologist who as Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing on improving epidemic preparedness. Rivers is currently working on the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the incorporation of infectious disease modeling and forecasting into public health decision making.

Alexandra Louise Phelan is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She specializes in international legal and policy issues that are related to emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, including upstream drivers of disease emergence like climate change.

Colleen S. Kraft is an infectious disease physician, associate professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and the director of the Clinical Virology Research Laboratory at Emory University School of Medicine. In 2014, she led Emory University Hospital's effort to treat and care for Ebola virus disease patients and is currently working to address the COVID-19 pandemic in Georgia. She currently serves on Georgia's COVID-19 task force.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Daszak</span> British zoologist

Peter Daszak is a British zoologist, consultant and public expert on disease ecology, in particular on zoonosis. He is the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit non-governmental organization that supports various programs on global health and pandemic prevention. He is also a member of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He lives in Suffern, New York.

Science diplomacy is the collaborative efforts by local and global entities to solve global issues using science and technology as a base. In science diplomacy, collaboration takes place to advance science but science can also be used to facilitate diplomatic relations. This allows even conflicting nations to come together through science to find solutions to global issues. Global organizations, researchers, public health officials, countries, government officials, and clinicians have previously worked together to create effective measures of infection control and subsequent treatment. They continue to do so through sharing of resources, research data, ideas, and by putting into effect laws and regulations that can further advance scientific research. Without the collaborative efforts of such entities, the world would not have the vaccines and treatments we now possess for diseases that were once considered deadly such as tuberculosis, tetanus, polio, influenza, etc. Historically, science diplomacy has proved successful in diseases such as SARS, Ebola, Zika and continues to be relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marion Koopmans</span> Dutch virologist

Maria Petronella Gerarda Koopmans is a Dutch virologist who is Head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience. Her research considers emerging infectious diseases, noroviruses and veterinary medicine. In 2018 she was awarded the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Stevin Prize. She serves on the scientific advisory group of the World Health Organization.

Sylvie Champaloux Briand is a French physician who is Director of the Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases Department at the World Health Organization. Briand led the Global Influenza Programme during the 2009 swine flu pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Briand launched the WHO Information Network for Epidemics which looked to counter the spread of COVID-19 misinformation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saskia Popescu</span> Infectious disease epidemiologist

Saskia Popescu is an infectious disease epidemiologist and global health security expert in Phoenix, Arizona. She is an Assistant Professor of epidemiology at the University of Maryland, and holds academic appointments at the University of Arizona and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, where she lectures on biopreparedness and outbreak response. Since the start of the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, Popescu has worked to prepare for and mitigate the spread of the disease within healthcare and the entertainment industry, where she led the global epidemiology and infection prevention response for Netflix. She has been recognized for her communication efforts around the pandemic, as well as her work on the front lines in infection prevention and healthcare biopreparedness. Popescu currently is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks, addressing converging biological risks from biological weapons nonproliferation, biosecurity, emerging infectious diseases and ecological security, biopreparedness in private industry, and global health security vulnerabilities.

John J. Lowe is an American infectious disease scientist, assistant vice chancellor for health security at University of Nebraska Medical Center, and associate professor in the Department of Environmental, Agricultural and Occupational Health at University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health. In 2014, he led Nebraska Medicine hospital’s effort to treat and care for Ebola virus disease patients and led the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s coronavirus disease 2019 response efforts.

Ann Marie Kimball is an American physician. She is known for being the pioneer of electronic disease surveillance for infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics. She is currently a Professor Emerita in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington, a Consulting Fellow at the Chatham House Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs, and was a Strategic Consultant in Global Health at the Rockefeller Foundation. Kimball served as a technical and strategic lead for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation infectious disease surveillance strategy formation.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Most, Doug (May 19, 2021). "Nahid Bhadelia to Health Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research".
  2. ↑ "Nahid Bhadelia, MD, MALD | Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research". www.bu.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  3. ↑ Abbasi, Jennifer (2022-10-25). "White House Advisor Nahid Bhadelia, MD, MALD, on COVID-19 in Resource-Limited Nations-Undercounted Deaths, Vaccine Inequity, and More". JAMA. 328 (16): 1577–1579. doi: 10.1001/jama.2022.13663 . ISSN   1538-3598. PMID   36197671. S2CID   252714486.
  4. ↑ Diamond, Dan (2023-04-27). "Analysis | As pandemic experts leave the White House, some worry: what's next?". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  5. 1 2 "On the Front Lines Fighting Ebola". Tufts Now. 2015-01-23. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  6. 1 2 Engl, India New; News (2015-06-06). "Frontline Physician Fighting Ebola Dr. Nahid Bhadelia is the 2015 Woman of the Year". INDIA New England News. Archived from the original on 2020-03-28. Retrieved 2020-03-28.{{cite web}}: |last2= has generic name (help)
  7. ↑ Bhadelia, Nahid. "Linkedin".
  8. ↑ "Q&A: Nahid Bhadelia On Treating Ebola". Boston Magazine. 2014-11-25. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  9. ↑ Bhadelia, Nahid; Sonti, Rajiv; McCarthy, Jennifer Wright; Vorenkamp, Jaclyn; Jia, Haomiao; Saiman, Lisa; Furuya, E. Yoko (August 2013). "Impact of the 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) Pandemic on Healthcare Workers at a Tertiary Care Center in New York City". Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. 34 (8): 825–831. doi:10.1086/671271. ISSN   0899-823X. PMID   23838223. S2CID   21548080.
  10. ↑ Bhadelia, Nahid; Sauer, Lauren; Cieslak, Theodore J.; Davey, Richard T.; McLellan, Susan; Uyeki, Timothy M.; Kortepeter, Mark G.; Akers, Mary; Dierberg, Kerry; Eiras, Dan; Evans, Jared (2019-02-01). "Evaluating Promising Investigational Medical Countermeasures: Recommendations in the Absence of Guidelines". Health Security. 17 (1): 46–53. doi:10.1089/hs.2018.0092. ISSN   2326-5094. PMC   6636676 . PMID   30724616.
  11. ↑ "Our Mission | Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research". www.bu.edu. Retrieved 2021-05-20.
  12. ↑ Dutt, Ela (27 March 2020). "Spotlight Series: Indian-American infectious disease expert, Dr. Nahid Bhadelia of Massachusetts | News India Times" . Retrieved 2020-03-28.
  13. ↑ "HarvardX: PH557 Lessons from Ebola: Preventing the Next Pandemic".
  14. ↑ Narra, Rupa; Sobel, Jeremy; Piper, Catherine; Gould, Deborah; Bhadelia, Nahid; Dott, Mary; Fiore, Anthony; Fischer, William A.; Frawley, Mary Jo; Griffin, Patricia M.; Hamilton, Douglas (2017-11-30). "CDC Safety Training Course for Ebola Virus Disease Healthcare Workers". Emerging Infectious Diseases. 23 (13): S217-24. doi:10.3201/eid2313.170549. ISSN   1080-6040. PMC   5711301 . PMID   29154748.
  15. ↑ Cancedda, Corrado; Davis, Sheila M.; Dierberg, Kerry L.; Lascher, Jonathan; Kelly, J. Daniel; Barrie, Mohammed Bailor; Koroma, Alimamy Philip; George, Peter; Kamara, Adikali Alpha; Marsh, Ronald; Sumbuya, Manso S. (2016-10-15). "Strengthening Health Systems While Responding to a Health Crisis: Lessons Learned by a Nongovernmental Organization During the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic in Sierra Leone". Journal of Infectious Diseases. 214 (suppl 3): S153–S163. doi:10.1093/infdis/jiw345. ISSN   0022-1899. PMC   5050485 . PMID   27688219.
  16. ↑ Yong, Ed (2020-02-03). "The New Coronavirus Is a Truly Modern Epidemic". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  17. ↑ "Project Information - NIH RePORTER - NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results". projectreporter.nih.gov. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  18. ↑ "One Doctor's Campaign To Pay Those Who Risked Their Lives". NPR.org. NPR. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  19. ↑ Maxmen, Amy (13 August 2015). "A Doctor's Gift To The Brave Nurses Of Sierra Leone". NPR. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  20. ↑ "BU School of Medicine Section of Infectious Diseases".
  21. ↑ Bhadelia, Nahid (2020-02-09). "The Best Defense Against Disturbing New Diseases". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  22. ↑ "BU Physician Stresses Importance Of Containing COVID-19". News. 2020-03-12. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  23. 1 2 "US is 'behind the ball' for coronavirus response, doctor says". TODAY.com. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  24. ↑ Alwan, Nisreen A; Burgess, Rochelle Ann; Ashworth, Simon; Beale, Rupert; Bhadelia, Nahid; Bogaert, Debby; Dowd, Jennifer; Eckerle, Isabella; Goldman, Lynn R; Greenhalgh, Trisha; Gurdasani, Deepti; Hamdy, Adam; Hanage, William P; Hodcroft, Emma B; Hyde, Zoë; Kellam, Paul; Kelly-Irving, Michelle; Krammer, Florian; Lipsitch, Marc; McNally, Alan; McKee, Martin; Nouri, Ali; Pimenta, Dominic; Priesemann, Viola; Rutter, Harry; Silver, Joshua; Sridhar, Devi; Swanton, Charles; Walensky, Rochelle P; Yamey, Gavin; Ziauddeen, Hisham (October 2020). "Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now". The Lancet. 396 (10260): e71–e72. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32153-X. PMC   7557300 . PMID   33069277.
  25. ↑ "TEDxSpotlights Pandemics" . Retrieved 2020-03-29– via YouTube.
  26. ↑ "Ebola Doc". Tufts Magazine. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
  27. ↑ Editors, Elemental (2020-09-18). "50 Experts to Trust in a Pandemic". Medium. Retrieved 2020-09-20.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.