Faculty
Dagan Coppock, MD
Dr. Dagan Coppock was born and raised in East Tennessee. He received a BS in biology with a minor in creative writing at the University of Tennessee. During his time at UT, he was a Whittle Scholar and, through that program, worked as a phlebotomist in a rural clinic in Ghana. Following his time at UT, he was a Fulbright scholar in Nigeria, during which he studied the poetry of traditional healers. Dr. Coppock went on to attend medical school at Yale University School of Medicine, following which, he did his residency at BIDMC. After graduating from BIDMC, he went to work at Brockton Neighborhood Health Center as a National Health Service Corps scholar. During that service, he also worked on a project called Mas Saudi Pa Kabu Verdi, a program designed to promote health in Cape Verde. Through that program he helped conduct free clinics on various islands in Cape Verde. Otherwise, Dr. Coppock has also worked on global health projects in both South Africa and India.
Jonathan Crocker, MD
Instructor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Jonathan Crocker is an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and a hospitalist at BIDMC. He has extensive field experience in global health, including clinical work in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. After working as a primary care clinician at Massachusetts General Hospital for nearly six years, Dr. Crocker moved to rural Malawi as Director of Clinical Services with Partners In Health, Malawi. In this role, he supported and augmented clinical services focused on HIV, TB and malaria at the district level, and helped create Chronic Care and Kaposi Sarcoma clinics. In January 2010, Dr. Crocker joined one of the first emergency medical response teams from Partners In Health to travel to Haiti after the earthquake. Dr. Crocker’s academic interests include health care delivery in resource-poor settings, medical education, and mentorship of residents in global health activities.
Claudia Denkinger, MD, PhD, Msc, DTM&H
Infectious Disease Fellow, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Dr. Claudia Denkinger completed her medical school in Wuerzburg, Germany. As a medical student she went to lectures in tropical medicine at the Medical Mission Institute and spent several months working in Central and South America. Subsequently, she did her internal medicine training at the BIDMC. During and after her residency she worked for a non-governmental organization in HIV and tuberculosis care in South Africa. She also completed a Master in Tropical Medicine and International Public Health as well as a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is currently a chief medical resident at the BIDMC and is pursuing further training in infectious diseases.
B. Lachlan Forrow, MD
Director of Ethics and Palliative Care Programs Associate Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School President of The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship
Dr. Lachlan Forrow earned his A.B. (summa cum laude in Philosophy) from Princeton University in 1978 and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School (HMS) in 1983. As a senior medical student, he spent three months in Africa as an Albert Schweitzer Fellow at the Schweitzer Hospital in Lambarene, Gabon. After completing his residency training in primary care internal medicine at Rhode Island Hospital/Brown University, he returned to Harvard for a two year Faculty Development Fellowship in General Internal Medicine, followed by a year as a Fellow in the Harvard University Program in Ethics and the Professions, where he continues as a Faculty Associate.
Beginning as a medical student in 1980, Dr. Forrow has been active for more than twenty-five years in the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), which was honored in 1985 with the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Forrow has served as the New England Regional Director of IPPNW's U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), and as a member of PSR's Board of Directors and Executive Committee. From 1993-1996, Dr. Forrow served as Chair of IPPNW's Board of Directors, and in 1994-95 he served also as IPPNW's Chief Executive Officer. He has served more recently as the organization's Parliamentarian and helps lead the organization's ICAN Campaign which seeks a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty committing the world to the permanent, verifiable and enforceable elimination of nuclear weapons in a specified timetable.
Dr. Forrow also serves as President of The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship and as Vice President and the U.S. representative on the governing Council of The Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambarene, Gabon. Founded in 1940 to support Dr. Schweitzer's work when World War II interrupted supply lines from Europe, The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship administers a variety of programs designed to translate Dr. Schweitzer's ethic of "Reverence for Life" into tangible action. These programs include: sending at least four senior U.S. medical students annually to serve as Schweitzer Fellows in Lambarene; providing additional support for other programs (including village-based preventive and community health services) at the Lambarene Hospital; and supporting over 200 health professional students each year as Schweitzer Fellows within the United States, who engage in public service activities through Schweitzer Fellows Programs.
In 2007, Dr. Forrow was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for Community Service from Harvard Medical School. He has lectured widely and published numerous articles and book chapters on issues in medical ethics education, palliative care, medical decision-making and the social responsibilities of physicians. His work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine and other leading publications.
Howard Libman, MD
Director, HIV Program in Healthcare Associates, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Director, Harvard Medical School AIDS Initiative in Vietnam (HAIVN)
Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Howard Libman is Director of the HIV Program in Healthcare Associates at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He directs the Harvard Medical School AIDS Initiative in Vietnam (HAIVN), a CDC-funded project which trains Vietnamese clinicians in the care of HIV-infected patients. He has prior international HIV training experience in India and China.
Dr. Libman received his medical degree from Case Western Researve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. He completed residency training in internal medicine at University Hospitals of Cleveland and fellowship training in infectious diseases at Boston University Affiliated Hospitals. From 1983 to 1993, Dr. Libman was a member of the Section of General Internal Medicine at Boston City Hospital, where he served as Associate Director of the Clinical AIDS Program. From 1993 to the present time, he has served as Director of the HIV Program in Healthcare Associates, a hospital-based, academic primary care practice that provides care for 500 HIV-infected patients.
Dr. Libman's career has focused on caring for persons with HIV disease and educating clinicians and patients. He has authored numerous original manuscripts, review articles, textbooks, and multimedia resources on this topic. Dr. Libman is co-editor of the textbook, HIV, a third edition of which was published in 2007 by the American College of Physicians. He is a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America national expert panel on HIV primary care guidelines, which have been published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. He is also clinical director of the New England AIDS Education and Training Center.
Jennifer Mitty, MD, MPH
Director of Infectious Disease Fellowship Training Program
Assistant Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Mitty's main area of research has been in HIV and underserved populations. Her work has focused on developing interventions to improve medication adherence and secondary prevention among HIV populations, as well as integrating substance abuse treatment into the HIV care setting.
As the fellowship director for Infectious Diseases she will be able to help link residents to global health opportunities in that field, both within the BIDMC, as well as in the Harvard wide community.
Kate Powis, MD
Kate Powis is board certified in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics and works in Botswana at least six months out of each academic year. Her efforts in Botswana are divided between precepting Internal Medicine and/or Pediatric Residents at a village hospital in Molepolole, where she also provides capacity building for the medical officers and nursing staff at the hospital, and researching the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV through the rich research infrastructure afforded by the Botswana-Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative Partnership (BHP). When Kate is not working in Botswana, she has clinical responsibilities in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Kate attended Medical College of Virginia and completed her residency training in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. Following residency, she was selected as one of the first recipients of the Global Women’s Health Fellowship program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The fellowship afforded Kate the opportunity to obtain her MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. In addition, she worked for BHP on a clinical trial, the Mma Bana study. This randomized controlled trial investigated the safety and efficacy of two different highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) regimens initiated during pregnancy and continued throughout breastfeeding up to six months postpartum in HIV-infected women who did not require HAART for their own health. The Mma Bana study reported a combined 1.1% mother-to-child HIV transmission (MTCT) rate through six months postpartum (NEJM 17Jun10). This low rate is below that of United States where breastfeeding is not practiced. The study provided evidence that led the World Health Organization to revise their guidelines for prevention of MTCT in 2010.
Christopher Rowley, MD
Instructor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Christopher Rowley is a member of the Division of Infectious Diseases at BIDMC and a research associate in the Division of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). He is a member of the Botswana-Harvard AIDS Initiative Partnership (BHP) and through this collaboration he lived and worked in Botswana from 2004-05 providing care in the national HIV treatment program and working in the laboratory. He currently is working in the lab at HSPH focused on evaluating clinical samples from Botswana in women exposed to nevirapine during pregnancy and how this impaces future maternal success with antiretrovirals. He also is employing new techniques to evalute for transmitted drug resistance in treatment-naive patients. He previously has been involved in clinical care in Uganda and Zambia and is collaborating with researchers in Papua New Guinea on a project looking at the cost-effectiveness of antiretroviral treatment in Papua New Guinea.
Roger Shapiro, MD
Faculty Director, Botswana Clinical Fellowship Program, Harvard Initiative for Global Health
Associate Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Roger Shapiro is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health. His primary research interests are in the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) and the reduction of morbidity and mortality among infants born to HIV-infected women. Since 1999, Dr. Shapiro has sutdied infant outcomes and peripartum PMTCT strategies among 1200 mothers and infants in the Mashi Study in Botswana. He is the principal investigator of hte Mma Bana Study, which is evaluating virologic efficacy and HIV transmission rates among 730 women receiving 3 different antiretroviral combinatoins during pregnancy, delivery, and breastfeeding. Dr. Shapiro is also the principal investigator for a study of birth outcomes in Botswana that will evaluate more than 25,000 deliveries among HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected women in Botswana. He is also a co-investigator for a pilot implementation study to provide male infant circumcision services in Botswana. Dr. Shapiro works closely with the Botswana PMTCT Programme, and is a member of the PMTCT Advisory Panel for the World Health Organization.
Dr. Shapiro is an Associate Director for Education at the Harvard Initiative for Global Health. In this capacity, he helps to mentor Infectious Disease fellows, residents, and students who ar intersted in research projects related to international HIV. With funding from the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, Dr. Shapiro has helped to establish a Clinical Care and Research Fellowship at the Scottish Livingstone Hospital in Molepolole, Botswana to support fellows and junior faculty starting careers in international HIV.
Gordon Strewler, MD
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School,
Vice-Chair for Education
Master of the Walter Bradford Cannon Society, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Gordon "Buck" Strewler graduated summa cun laude from Dartmouth College in 1968 and cum laude from Harvard Medical School Class of 1971. He completed his residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, the predecessor of Brigham and Womens. After clinical and research training in Endocrinology-Metabolism at the National Institutes of Health, he joined the faculty of the University of California, San Francisco in 1979. He is an expert in calcium and bone matabolism; his laboratory identified, sequenced and cloned the parathyroid hormone-related protein, PTHrP, developed the first assay to detect PTHrP in patients with hypercalcemia, and led the way to the understanding of its role in disease. He was Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Endocrine Unit at the sFVAMC and also directed the UCSF Endocrinology Fellowship Program for many years.
Dr. Strewler returned to Boston in 1996 to become Chief of Medicine at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center (now part of the VA Boston Healthcare System), Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine for Educational and Clinical Affairs and a member of the Division of Endocrinology. In 2001, Dr. Strewler also became Master of the Walter Bradford Cannon Society, one of five academic societies in which students at Harvard Medical School spend their academic lives.
At BIDMC, Dr. Strewler is directly involved with residents in several ways. He manages the resident research program, meeting with residents to help find mentors, tracking their progress and helping when things get difficult, and he teaches the Research for Residents course with Dr. Ken Mukamal. he works with faculty advisers in the Physician-Scientist Program. he is the adviser for the Resident Journal Club and oversees the Firm System. Dr. Strewler is deeply engaged in recruitment and in crafting unique program for residents with special talents in research, education, health care quality or global health.
Michael Wong, MD
Assistant Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Wong is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is on staff in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He has extensive experience in healthcare policy development from the local to the international arenas. He currently serves as the Board Chair for AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts and served as Public Policy Chair of the American Academy of HIV Medicine from 2006-2008. Internationally, he successfully developed a healthcare prevention program in Vladivostok, Russia through a USAID grant to address general vaccination strategies, bloodborne pathogens, and hospital-borne infections. He has provided external consultative services for HIV and TB rollout programs in Ukraine for Medecins sans Frontieres, and reviewed HIV/malaria/TB serivces for a private health consortium in Lusaka, Zambia.
