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International Advisory Group

Professor Stephen Leeder
  Stephen Leeder is a professor of public health and community medicine at the University of Sydney. He has a long history of involvement in public health research, educational development and policy, and is currently director of the Australian Health Policy Institute, to provide independent, non-partisan analysis of major health policy questions which confront Australian and international health systems. Professor Leeder has 35 years of experience in epidemiological research, medical education reform and in mentoring young investigators. In 2003-04, Professor Leeder worked at Columbia University, New York, in the Earth Institute and Mailman School of Public Health, developing a substantial report, based on research data and scientific interpretation, of the economic consequences of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in developing economies. The report, A Race against Time: the challenge of cardiovascular disease in developing economies, report concentrated upon the macroeconomic consequences of CVD, and was especially concerned with the fact that one-third of CVD deaths in many developing countries were occurring among people of working age
Professor Virasakdi Chongsuvivatwong
  Virasakdi Chongsuvivatwong cvirasak@medicine.psu.ac.this currently a Professor of Community Medicine at Prince of Songkla University, Hatyai, southern Thailand. He has been running an International Programme for Graduate Study for Asian students since 1992. He also served as a WHO visiting consultant to various research institutes in Asia over 40 times, mostly on proposal development and data analysis. Using a package 'Epicalc' that he developed based on R, an open-source statistical software and his own tutorial book that is downloadable from http://www.CRAN.r-project.org, he and his colleagues have been running a free Internet Course "Do-It-Yourself: Essential Epidemiological Data Analysis" twice a year since 2006 at http://medipe.psu.ac.th/elearning.
Mr Omo Oaiya
  Mr Omo Oaiya runs Datasphir, the leading provider of Linux and open source software solutions in Nigeria. Headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria with an international office in Chelmsford, UK Datasphir is managed by innovative technologists who are able to devise new solutions for clients by integrating Open Source technologies. As founder of nu-Learning.com, he was instrumental in pioneering the use of e-Learning content in a number educational institutions and commercial organizations. He has subsequently focused this interest in the development and promotion of open standards in education systems design to drive down the barrier of adoption of practical technical solutions. He holds a degree in Pharmacy and has significant expertise in integrating open source technologies, including Moodle and Linux, in higher education environments.
Dr John Dada
  John Dada is a volunteer with Fantsuam Foundation, a rural women's NGO in northern Nigeria, since 1996. He has responsibility for development of rural development initiatives to make Fantsuam a thriving rural knowledge economy driver in Nigeria One of such initiatives was awarded the First Hafkin Africa Prize (www.apc.org/english/hafkin), and other activities have been featured in the Nigerian Press, http://allafrica.com/stories/200703290256.html, CNN Global Challenges (19th Dec, 2004, and 2006), BBC (Dec2006) and www.gn.apc.org/dada.mp3, www.gn.apc.org/egypt.mp3, BBC World (August 2005 http://www.handsontv.info/series6/02_E_Frontiers_reports/report1.html, as well as in the most important national mainstream newspaper, El País de Madrid, (Barcelona, Spain, June 2007), http://www.elpais.com/articulo/tecnologia/PC/todos/elpeputec/20070906elpcibtec_5/Tes, and http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=5253611(Sept, 2007). He promotes the use of radios, community theatre and multimedia to improve accessibility of relevant health and educational information to rural communities. His present interests include the development and deployment of the ultra low-powered Solo computer for health, education and commerce in remote and under-served communities in Nigeria.
Pamela McLean
  Dadamac Foundation http://www.dadamac.net/, London, UK
Dr Elfatih Malik
  Dr Malik is Director General of the National Malaria and other vector-borne diseases Control Programme in the Federal Ministry of Health, Sudan. He holds a medical degree and a doctorate in Community Medicine. He has experience in a number of areas of Public Health including disease control programmes, epidemic control, and district health systems. He is involved in teaching public health for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and is an active researcher with many publications and current research grants, mainly in the field of malaria control.
Dr Jamie Rossiter
  Jamie is Canadian and currently reading for a degree in e-Learning at the University of Oxford until September 2008. He has been working in the field of distance and e-learning for about 12 years and has been a consultant to the Public Health Agency of Canada on its online courses for the past two.
Dr Wayne Mackintosh
  Dr. Wayne Mackintosh is a committed advocate and user of free software for education. He was the founding project leader of New Zealand's eLearning XHTML editor (eXe) project (www.exelearning.org) and responsible for establishing the Commonwealth of Learning's (COL) WikiEducator (www.WikiEducator.org) - a website that provides free eLearning content that anyone can edit and use.

Dr. Mackintosh joined COL as Education Specialist, eLearning and ICT Policy, on 1 May 2006. Formerly, he was Associate Professor and founding director of the Centre for Flexible and Distance Learning (CFDL) at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Wayne has extensive experience in the theory and practice of open and distance learning (ODL). Prior to moving to New Zealand he spent eleven years working at the University of South Africa (UNISA), a distance learning institution and one of the world's mega-universities. At the University of Auckland, he was tasked with eLearning strategy and leading CFDL's professional staff team. He has participated in a range of international consultancies and projects including work for COL, the International Monetary Fund, UNESCO and the World Bank. Wayne also serves as a member of the Editorial Board of Open Learning and publishes regularly in the field of flexible and distance learning. Wayne is a member of the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation (wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board).

Dr. Sam Adjei
  Sam Adjei is a public health physician with skills in policy development, strategic planning and research. He has over 25 years experience in health development, from the district through the regional, national, and global levels. He has worked in academia at the Department of Community Health in the University of Ghana Medical School, the School of Public Health and at Aberdeen University where he was a visiting professor and policy advisor to the Initiative on Maternal Mortality Program Assessment (IMMPACT), a global research project. He has worked in research as the Director of Research in the Ministry of Health for more than 10 years. He has been a key leader in the Swap process in Ghana since 1994. His skills include health research systems development, partnerships and inter-sector collaboration, health systems development and health systems strengthening, donor coordination, health financing especially health insurance systems development and evidence based policy making.

He is currently the Chief Consultant of the Ghana Health Service having been the Deputy Director General for seven years. He is a Board Member of the Health Metric Network of WHO and now working on a project to improve the quality of midwifery care in Ghana.


 
  Professor Mala Rao
  Professor Mala Rao, previously Head of Public Health Workforce and Capacity at the Department of Health in England and a Director of Public Health in the NHS for many years, is now Director of the Indian Instituteof Public Health in Hyderabd (part of the Public Health Foundation of India). Throughout her career, Mala has been committed to addressing health and social inequalities, developing multidisciplinary public health and bringing public health teaching, research and practice closer together. She led the establishment of regional Teaching Public Health Networks across England in 2006, to develop the roles of Higher and Further Education as health promoting organisations and to mainstream public health learning though interdisciplinary collaboration. During her time as a DPH her contributions to national policy relevant local research have included a trial of the accelerated childhood immunisation schedule. She chaired a project jointly with the Welsh Assembly, to strengthen the health promotion/health improvement workforce in the NHS. The project report, Shaping the Future of Public Health: Promoting Health in the NHS was published in July 2005. She has contributed for many years to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, her closest connections being with Cambridge, Anglia Ruskin and Essex Universities. She is a member of the editorial board of the newly established Journal of Clinical Education Resources
Dr Mahmood Adil
  Medical Director, The Care Quality Commission Establishment Team, Department of Health for England Visiting Fellow of Global Health, Yale School of Public Health, USA. Mahmood Adil trained as pediatrician before starting his career in public health medicine in 1994 in Wales. He has got his higher qualification in medicine, public health, health economics, health service management and health informatics and become alumnus of the Kennedy School of Government (Harvard University) and the Judge Institute of Management (University of Cambridge) Leadership Programmes. Over the years his areas of responsibilities has focused on standards of NHS clinical care, public health surveillance & intelligence systems, development and implementation of health policies (diabetes, heart diseases & mental), quality assurance of national cancer screening programs at the regional level, promoting good practice in international humanitarian health work and establishing regulatory framework to improve the quality of health and social care services in England. He holds honorary academic positions at the universities of Yale, Manchester and Central Lancashire and has taught master level programmes in public health both in the UK and USA. He is Faculty of Public Health examiner, accredited trainer for the public health higher training programme in UK and successfully created academic and health services collaborations with a number of countries.
   
Myrna.jpg Ms Myrna Lachenal
  Myrna Lachenal is a member of the newly formed NGO Alliance for Health Promotion, and is lead representative of the World Federation for Mental Health to the UN in Geneva. Elected municipal counselor of the commune of Meinier, Geneva, she is president of the Commission Sociale et Aide au development. Myrna holds masters masters degrees in Nursing, Education, and STS (Science Technology and Society.). Professionally she has worked in various communities in the Philippines, Laos and and Geneva, in public health, in education , in administration and as a nurse clinician. Substantial work with NGOs include that with the Swiss Nursing Association’ for its Code of Ethics.