Global Health Poster Showcase

Learn more about global health efforts at the University of Minnesota by exploring the Global Health Poster Showcase from September 28 to October 2, 2020 during the week leading up to Global Health Day.

During the showcase, we encourage you to ask questions and share feedback on the posters. You can also vote for your top 3 favorite posters during the showcase. Your votes will go toward the Audience Favorite Award presented along with the Outstanding Poster Awards on Saturday, October 3, 2020.

Explore the poster showcase.

Diego García-Huidobro, Medical School, Santiago de Chile
September 21, 2020 - 9:00am ct

Diego García-Huidobro, MD, PhD, is a family physician and researcher. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota. At PUC, Diego serves as his Department’s Research Director and co-directs the Family and Health Unit. He uses cutting-edge methods to develop, implement and evaluate interventions that strengthen family relationships to improve health. He has served as the principal or co-investigator in several research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States and by the Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT) in Chile. Currently, he leads a cluster-randomized study evaluating the effectiveness of a family-centered intervention to prevent adolescent substance use and a controlled clinical study evaluating the impact of a school-based intervention to prevent and reduce childhood obesity. Diego’s work has been published in more than 35 peer-reviewed publications including in leading journals such as Pediatrics, Family Medicine, Prevention Science, and the British Journal of General Practice. For his contributions bridging science and community impact, Diego was named a member of the 2020 cohort of the World Economic Forum’s Young Scientist Community.

Walter James, Aid Worker
September 22, 2020 - 3:00pm ct

Walter Y. James is an aid worker with 14 years of humanitarian relief experience in over 10 countries/emergency responses, including Haiti, DR Congo, Nigeria, Ebola Response (Liberia), Syrian Conflict Response, South Sudan, Rwanda, Venezuelan Migrant Response (Colombia), and Burma. His technical areas of professional focus include project management and humanitarian logistics/supply chain, often in health-related programs. Walter holds bachelor degrees from the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Maryland. In his spare time, Walter enjoys eating street food, learning new languages, and recovering from tropical diseases.
 

Darlisha Williams, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Minnesota
September 23, 2020 - 10:00am ct

Ms. Darlisha Williams is a project manager in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota. She graduated with an MPH in Epidemiology in 2006 from the UMN School of Public Health, and completed a 3 year fellowship with the Centers for Disease Control which focused on Maternal and Child Health and HIV policy. She has worked in the field of global health since 2005 on projects including reducing rates of waterborne diseases, and polio eradication in Tanzania. She lived and worked in Uganda for 8 years, coordinating several multi-site,  randomized clinical trials involving HIV associated meningitis before moving back to Minnesota in 2019. Her main interests are project implementation, management and program evaluation in global health settings.
 

Karthik Natarajan, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota
September 28, 2020 - 3:00pm ct

Karthik Natarajan is an assistant professor of Supply Chain and Operations at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His research interests are in socially-responsible operations and specifically, managing global health supply chains and increasing access to and availability of essential health commodities in developing countries. Within this context, his works have explored several key issues including understanding the impact of uncertainty and delays in donor funding, designing incentives to patients and healthcare providers to maximize the number of people benefitting from a humanitarian healthcare program, and identifying supply chain strategies to lower the likelihood of health commodities (e.g., reproductive health supplies) at last-mile facilities in developing countries. He has consulted for global health agencies including USAID and also actively works with Minneapolis-based non-profits. Natarajan’s research has been published in several leading journals including Manufacturing and Service Operations Management and Production and Operations Management. His comments on global health issues, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been featured in several media outlets including the New York Times, Star Tribune, PBS, Kare 11 and Fox9.
 

Peter Larsen, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota
September 30, 2020 - 3:00pm ct

Dr. Peter Larsen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences. He leads a diverse research program focused on Evolutionary Medicine and One Health and is Co-Director of the Minnesota Center for Prion Research and Outreach. Dr. Larsen is a classically trained mammologist and evolutionary biologist and he has participated in and led several collaborative international field expeditions aimed at cataloging mammalian biodiversity and discovering emerging zoonoses associated with mammalian wildlife. These expeditions resulted in the discovery of two new species of bats in the Caribbean and South America, novel tick-borne parasites circulating in Madagascar, and a novel strain of Tick-Borne encephalitis virus in Kyrgyzstan. Dr. Larsen is currently collaborating with faculty at the University of Malaysia Sarawak in Borneo to establish a collaborative research program focused on field-based metagenomics and zoonotic pathogen discovery. Ongoing projects conducted by students and staff in the Larsen Lab include molecular characterization of viruses and bacteria at the rodent-livestock interface, real-time surveillance and discovery of tick-borne pathogens, molecular diagnostic R&D for Chronic Wasting Disease causing prions, and micro/macro-parasite discovery in Amazonian bush-meat.
 

Kaylee M Errecaborde, Faculty, College of Veterinary Medicine; Consultant, Tripartite Initiative, World Health Organization 
October 2, 2020 - 3:00pm ct

Kaylee Myhre Errecaborde, DVM PhD, is a policy researcher and a veterinarian. Kaylee supports researchers and practitioners to situate their technical work within the context of global policies and frameworks. As a Technical Consultant with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, she supports member countries to utilize the Tripartite Zoonoses Guide to build capacity for multisectoral, One Health preparedness and response for zoonotic disease. As faculty at the University of Minnesota she leads the development of policy programs at the College of Veterinary Medicine and consults on global health projects. She previously worked for the US Congress on global health, border health and food security issues with both the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and the US Senate Homeland Security Committee.