Mother and Newborn Information for Tracking Outcomes and Results (MoNITOR)

Dr. Alison Morgan, MBBS DTM&H DRANZCOG PhD, is currently the Head of the Maternal, Sexual and Reproductive Health Unit at the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne and is one of the co-chairs of the Mothers and Newborns Indicators for Tracking Outcomes and Results (MoNITOR) on which GAMA is modelled..

While her main area of research has been on maternal health care quality and metrics, she has had a long interest in adolescent sexual and reproductive health, youth friendly health services, and how health systems can be strengthened to meet the needs of young people. Really looking forward to what GAMA can achieve and how to link it with the work of MoNITOR and CHAT.

Dr. Agbessi Amouzou is a demographer and currently Associate Professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore, USA. His interests are in the measurement and analysis of coverage of high impact maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) programs in low and middle-income countries (LMIC); evaluation of the effectiveness these programs at large scale, and in the measurement and monitori ng of neonatal and child mortality. He led the recent large-scale effectiveness evaluation of the integrated Community Case Management in Ethiopia and Malawi. He currently leads the implementation of a nationwide sample registration system for mortality and cause of death monitoring in Mozambique. He is active in global public health practice and participate in key technical and accountability initiatives in MNCH, including the Countdown to 2030 for women, children, and adolescent, within which he co-chairs the coverage technical working group. For two and half years, he led the MNCH coverage data analytics for global and country monitoring at UNICEF Headquarters in New York. He is originally from Togo, where he was born and raised.

Dr. Khalifa Elmusharaf, MBBS, PgCert, PgDip, FRSPH, PHD is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health at University of Limerick, Ireland. He was trained and began his career as an obstetrician in Sudan. He has worked for more than twenty years as a researcher, project manager, lecturer and health system specialist in academia, ministries of health, and international organizations in Africa, Middle East and Europe. Dr Elmusharaf is a consultant in public health, biostatistics, and research methods, with experience in qualitative research, and health system & service research. His research interest includes maternal and child health and Non Communicable Diseases.

Dr. Rajesh Kumar was born on 26th October 1954 in a farming community of Haryana State in India. After initial education in the village school, he graduated in Biological Sciences, and joined Govt. Medical College Rohtak (India). After obtaining MBBS degree in 1980, he worked as a House Surgeon for one year and obtained MD degree in social and preventive medicine in 1984. After that he joined in the community medicine department of Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh (India), where his responsibilities included delivery of primary health care, training of community health workers on maternal and child health interventions and conducting rapid evaluation surveys including the application of verbal autopsy. In 1991, he obtained MSc in Epidemiology from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (UK).

Katherine Semrau, PhD, MPH, is director of the BetterBirth Program at Ariadne Labs. As Program Director, Dr. Semrau oversees the research and execution of the BetterBirth Program which aims to improve the quality of care, minimize complications, and end the preventable deaths of women and newborns through effective implementation of evidence-based, scalable solutions at the frontline of care. Katherine is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Epidemiologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the Division of Global Health Equity. Dr. Semrau has over 19 years of experience in the fields of maternal, newborn and child health and epidemiology. Her research has focused on prevention of maternal and child mortality, improvement of quality of care, and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Currently, Dr. Semrau has a portfolio of research focused on designing, testing and implementing maternal and newborn health interventions in resource limited settings. The BetterBirth Program portfolio focuses on improving implementation and outcomes in maternal and neonatal health at time of childbirth with projects focused on the Safe Childbirth Checklist, Patient Education and Facility Readiness. Additionally, we have a project focused on identifying solutions for the most vulnerable newborns, especially low birthweight infants. Most recently, Dr. Semrau led one of the world's largest maternal/newborn health studies the BetterBirth trial. This large randomized controlled trial of a coaching-based intervention WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist in Uttar Pradesh, India tested the impact on provider adherence to practices, maternal/perinatal morbidity, and mortality. The Ariadne Labs team shared the results via a report available here. Previously, Dr. Semrau, the co-Principal Investigator of the Zambia Chlorhexidine Application Trial (ZamCAT), led the epidemiology and data analysis team for this cluster randomized control trial of >39,000 births in Southern Province, Zambia. As a team member of the Zambia Exclusive Breastfeeding Study, she lived in Zambia for over 3 years running the study laboratory and coordinating all enrollment, data collection and data management activities. She then returned to the U.S. and collaborated on multiple projects in sub-Saharan Africa, India and the Republic of Georgia. Dr. Semrau’s dissertation research focused on breast problems, including mastitis and abscess, and HIV in HIV-infected women in Zambia. Dr. Semrau has a PhD in epidemiology from Boston University and an MPH in international health and epidemiology from the University of Alabama-Birmingham.

Florina Serbanescu, an obstetrician by training, now focuses on tracking the level and causes of maternal and neonatal mortality globally. Dr. Serbanescu is leading the Global Reproductive Health Evidence for Action team in the Division of Reproductive Health. Dr. Serbanescu joined CDC in 1992 and led national reproductive health surveys in 7 countries in Eastern Europe, including Russia. Building on the success of the survey work, she helped develop reproductive age mortality studies and maternal and perinatal death surveillance and response systems. In 2008-2011, she chaired the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for the International Obstetric Fistula Working Group, designed to support the worldwide Campaign to End Fistula. From 2011, she led the evaluation of a large maternal and perinatal mortality reduction projects in Tanzania and became the lead monitoring and evaluation technical adviser to the Saving Mothers Giving Life initiative in Uganda and Zambia. She co-wrote the protocol of the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance project currently implemented in 7 countries by Emory Public Health Institute in collaboration with CDC. Dr. Serbanescu has co-authored more than 100 publications and contributes technical expertise to several global initiatives and working groups aimed to improve maternal and newborn health.

Lara Vaz, SM, PhD has since January 2013 worked as Senior Advisor, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research & Learning for the Department of Global Health at Save the Children, US. She is a public health behavioral scientist with over 20 years of experience in public health programming, monitoring and evaluation, and 15+ years of experience in conducting implementation research in resource-limited settings. Lara currently provides technical support to the Saving Newborn Lives project and other programs supporting MNCH; she is currently engaged in maternal and newborn health global policy and indicator development with WHO and other key partners. Programmatic areas of experience include maternal and newborn health, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and social and behavior change communication. Her areas of expertise include data use, capacity building, monitoring and evaluation design, qualitative and quantitative data collection methods (including routine information systems), instrument development, data analysis, interpretation and translation for diverse audiences. Fluent in four languages, Lara has a Masters in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health and a PhD in Health Behavior & Health Education from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Dr. Huda Alkitkat has twenty years of experience as a demographer and statistician. Her main areas of interest include; mother, newborn and child wellbeing in North Africa and some developing countries, Population estimates, population projection, Global burden of disease, reproductive health and family planning, and assessment of civil registration and vital statistics systems. Dr. Alkitkat is an international consultant in civil registration and vital statistics and has been part of many international collaborative works such as: The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). She is member of the editorial board of some international demographic journals.