Global Equity in Access to Pandemic Response Tools Speaker Bios
Dr. Melissa L. Gilliam
Dr. Melissa L. Gilliam became Boston University’s eleventh president on July 1, 2024. Dr. Gilliam is an esteemed and award-winning interdisciplinary researcher in medicine, public health, and the humanities. Dr. Gilliam joined Boston University from The Ohio State University, where she held the Engie-Axium chair and served as executive vice president and provost overseeing 15 colleges and six campuses and the Office of Academic Affairs, including undergraduate education, graduate education, international affairs, diversity and inclusion, external engagement, online learning, and information technology. She placed a keen focus on issues of access, affordability, and reducing student debt.
Prior to joining Ohio State, Dr. Gilliam spent the majority of her career at the University of Chicago, where she was the Ellen H. Block Distinguished Service Professor of Health Justice, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and pediatrics, and vice provost. In the latter role, her portfolio consisted of faculty hiring, faculty development, chair development, and diversity and inclusion. In these roles, she oversaw the Neubauer Family Assistant Professors Program, the Provost Postdoctoral Scholars Program, and faculty awards and recognition.
Dr. Gilliam’s scholarship focuses on developing biomedical and innovative interventions to promote adolescent health and well-being. Her research funders have included the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Irving Harris Foundation, and others. Dr. Gilliam is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Gynecological Club, and the American Gynecological & Obstetrical Society. She serves on the Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Among her many awards and honors, she received the King Arts Center Legacy Award in 2022, was named a Centennial Scholar of the Institute of Medicine of Chicago, and received the Chicago Urban League Innovator Award, the US Food and Drug Administration Advisory Committee Service Award, and the Chicago Foundation for Women Impact Award. She has published over 100 articles in her field.
A native of Washington, D.C., she is the daughter of the late, world-renowned, abstract painter Sam Gilliam and the pioneering journalist at the Washington Post Dorothy Butler Gilliam, the first Black female reporter hired at the paper. Dr. Gilliam earned her Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Yale University, a Master of Arts in philosophy and politics from the University of Oxford, a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard University, and a Master of Public Health from the University of Illinois Chicago. She completed an internship in general surgery at the University of Chicago and her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University.
Ms. Loyce Pace
In her current role, Ms. Pace is responsible for advancing the U.S. international health agenda through multilateral and bilateral forums. Reporting directly to the Secretary of Health & Human Services (HHS), she is the Office of Global Affairs’ lead on setting priorities and policies that promote American public health agencies and interests worldwide.
Ms. Pace oversees HHS’ engagement with foreign governments and international institutions as well policymaking bodies such as the G7, G20, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), and World Health Assembly. Previously, she served as President & Executive Director of Global Health Council (GHC) and was also a member of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. At GHC, she advocated for increased federal investments in global health, in the face of budget cuts to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, United States Agency for International Development, and World Health Organization (WHO).
Prior to her role at GHC, Ms. Pace spent over a decade working with community-based organizations and grassroots leaders in countries across Africa and Asia on campaigns calling for person-centered access to health. Additionally, she has held positions on various global and regional advisory committees and boards that focus on equity and inclusion. Ms. Pace holds a Bachelor’s degree with Honors in human biology from Stanford University and a Master’s degree in international health & human rights with the distinction of Delta Omega from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Nahid Bhadelia
Dr. Nahid Bhadelia is the founding director of BU Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research. She is a board-certified infectious diseases physician and an Associate Professor at the BU School of Medicine. She served the Senior Policy Advisor for Global COVID-19 Response for the White House COVID-19 Response Team in 2022-2023. Between 2011-2021, Dr. Bhadelia helped develop and then served as the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit (SPU) at Boston Medical Center, a medical unit designed to care for patients with highly communicable diseases, and a state designated Ebola Treatment Center. She is a faculty member with and was also previously an associate director for BU’s maximum containment research program, the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. She has provided direct patient care, and been part of outbreak response and medical countermeasures research during multiple Ebola virus disease outbreaks in West and East Africa between 2014-2019. She was the clinical lead and a senior advisor for a DoD-funded viral hemorrhagic fever clinical research unit in Uganda, entitled Joint Mobile Emerging Disease Intervention Clinical Capability (JMEDICC) program between 2017 and 2022. In 2022, she also served as the testing coordinator for the White House MPOX Response Team. Currently, she is a co-director of Fogarty funded, BU-University of Liberia Emerging and Epidemic Viruses Research training program. She is part of the World Health Organization(WHO)’s Technical Advisory Group on Universal Health and Preparedness Review (UHPR) and a member of the steering committee for Massachusetts Consortium for Pathogen Readiness.
Dr. Bhadelia’s research focuses on global health security and pandemic preparedness, including medical countermeasure evaluation and clinical care for emerging infections, diagnostics evaluation and positioning, infection control policy development, and healthcare worker training. She has health system response experience with pathogens such as H1N1, Zika, Lassa fever, Marburg virus disease, and COVID-19 at the state, national, and global levels.
Dr. Bhadelia has served on state, national, and interagency groups focused on biodefense priority setting, development of clinical care guidelines, and medical countermeasures research. She has served as a subject matter expert to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Defense (DoD), White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and World Bank. She is an adjunct professor at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University since 2016, where she teaches on global health security and emerging pathogens.
She has publications in Nature, Science, New England Journal of Medicine and other prestigious journals, as well as in press including Washington Post, and The Atlantic and Time magazines. Her work has been featured in documentaries by National Geographic as well as NOVA. She was an NBC/MSNBC Medical contributor 2020-2022.
Dr. Hillary Carter
Dr. Hillary H. Carter serves as the Senior Strategist for Global Health Security in the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy (GHSD). Prior to this role, Hillary served as the Acting Principal Deputy Coordinator for Global Health Security where she helped set the strategic vision for the State Department’s new Bureau and launch the Foreign Ministry Channel for Health Security.
Hillary has held leadership roles at the White House National Security Council, serving two tours, and at the Department of Homeland Security where she drove policy actions to strengthen global health security, respond to infectious disease threats, and counter chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons threats. During her White House tenure, she led the development of the first U.S. Global Health Security Strategy and the 2019 National Biodefense Strategy, which she helped revise in 2022.
Hillary started her government career at the State Department as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, before serving in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation where she managed multi-million-dollar programs to strengthen global security. Hillary holds a Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology from Vanderbilt University and earned a Key Executive Leadership Certificate from American University.
Dr. Andrea Vicari
Dr. Andrea Vicari is the Chief of the Infectious Hazard Management Unit at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO). In this role, he leads the work of PAHO’s Health Emergency Program to strengthen Member States’ capacities to prevent, prepare for, and respond to high-threat pathogens of known or emerging pandemic and epidemic potential, such as influenza viruses, coronaviruses, yellow fever virus, emerging arboviruses, hemorrhagic fever viruses, cholera, plague, and leptospirosis. This work includes developing and establishing pan- and epidemic preparedness plans, epidemiologic/virologic/genomic surveillance systems, laboratory diagnostic/reference services and their networking, biosafety and biosecurity, and capacities on clinical management and infection prevention and control. Within PAHO’s One Health approach, he leads the efforts to reduce risks from emerging and re-emerging zoonotic epidemics and pandemics.
Dr. Vicari has 20 years of experience at PAHO/WHO, with assignments at the country, regional and global levels, mostly in immunization and health emergencies. He advised the Colombian health authorities in the response to the 2009 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic, facilitated the uptake of human papillomavirus vaccines across the Americas, and led the field team that implemented the pivotal Ebola vaccine clinical trial in Guinea in 2015. In recent years, Dr. Vicari has served as the regional incident manager for dengue/Oropouche and mpox and was the technical lead of PAHO’s COVID-19 incident management system. He has responded to outbreaks of measles, cholera, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and other emerging diseases throughout the Americas.
Dr. Vicari holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the North Carolina State University, USA. Before joining PAHO, he was an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Joia Mukherjee
Dr. Joia Mukherjee is a physician, educator, and activist, trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and public health. Since 2000, Dr. Mukherjee has served as the Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health, an international medical organization with programs in the United States, Haiti, Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Peru, Mexico, Russia, Kazakhstan, the Navajo nation and now, in the COVID-19 pandemic, in cities and states across the U.S. Dr. Mukherjee coordinates and supports PIH’s efforts to provide high quality, comprehensive health care to the poorest and most vulnerable. She is an Associate Professor at the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Mukherjee is also on the faculty at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. Joia teaches infectious disease, global health delivery, and human rights to health professionals and students from around the world and directs the Masters degree program in Global Health Delivery at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of Introduction to Global Health Delivery: Practice, Equity, Human Rights, second edition, published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. Her scholarship focuses on the health delivery, Universal Health Coverage, and human rights. Joia is a mother and a singer.