Meet the IHY Team

Teresa Chahine is the inaugural Sheila and Ron ’92 B.A. Marcelo Lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship. She is the author of "Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship," a twelve-step framework for building impactful ventures in new and existing organizations. Dr. Chahine's research focuses on developing tools to characterize and advance social and environmental determinants of health. She launched the first social entrepreneurship program in the context of public health, at Harvard University. She was also responsible for launching the first venture philanthropy organization in her home country of Lebanon, providing tailored financing and critical management support to social enterprises serving marginalized populations through education and job creation for youth and women.

Martin Klein, Ph.D., M.P.H. is the Senior Advisor to the Dean of the Yale School of Public Health. He is also the founder of InnovateHealth Yale, a program in social impact and entrepreneurship and the co-founder and Executive Director of the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health CCCH). Martin believes that using the tools of entrepreneurship and innovation can accelerate equity and access and is excited to work with individuals and teams committed to improving health and education for low-income communities in the US and low-resource countries.

Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, Ph.D., is Professor of Public Health, Director of the Office of Public Health Practice, and Director of the Global Health Concentration at the Yale School of Public Health. He is the PI of the Yale-Griffin CDC Prevention Research Center (PRC). His global public health nutrition and food security research program has contributed to improvements in breastfeeding and other maternal, infant and young child nutrition outcomes, iron deficiency anemia among infants, household food security, and early child development. His health disparities research involves assessing the impact of community health workers at improving behavioral and metabolic outcomes in vulnerable communities. He has published over 280 research articles, 3 books/monographs, and numerous journal supplements, book chapters, and technical reports. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (elected in 2019) and served in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Food and Nutrition Board from 2012-18. He has been a senior advisor to maternal-child community nutrition programs as well as household food security measurement projects funded by the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, UNICEF, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the U.S. Agency for International Development, The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH),The World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Governments in Latin America & Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Europe . He obtained his BS in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and his MS in Food Science and his PhD in Nutrition from the University of California at Davis. His postdoctoral training at UC Davis focused on the link between nutrition and early childhood development.

Professor Jody Sindelar is a professor of public health, health economist, and public policy expert in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), as well as with Yale’s Department of Economics. In addition, she is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, and faculty fellow at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS). She is also a founding member and past president of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon).

Professor Sindelar’s expertise is on the economics of substance abuse, including addictive substances of tobacco/vaping, alcohol, and illicit drugs. She has published on the impacts of substance abuse on productivity, educational attainment, gender differences, and other policy issues; and in various journals of economics, policy, addiction, health and medicine. Also, she has served on numerous editorial, review, and advisory boards and committees, and has presented her research at seminars and conferences both nationally and abroad. Professor Sindelar has given keynote addresses to conferences in the United States, Australia, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. She has also been a visiting professor at several universities and institutes, including Boston University in Boston, MA; the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, CA and Washington, DC; Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City, Mexico; and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Medical School in Shanghai, China. In addition, she has had sabbaticals at the Institut d'études Politiques de Paris (Paris Institute of Political Studies) in Paris, France; Stanford University in Stanford, CA; and the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Sindelar has been a principal investigator or collaborator on numerous research projects funded by various organizations, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ); Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); Connecticut Department of Social Services (DSS); Food and Drug Administration (FDA); National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA); National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); National Institute on Aging (NIA); National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA); Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF); Department of Veterans Affairs (VA); Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (YCCI); and the Federal Drug Administration. 

Yetsa A. Tuakli-Wosornu, MD, MPH is a board-certified physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) physician, also known as a physiatrist. A physiatrist focuses on treating problems with the muscles, joints and nerves without surgery.

Dr. Tuakli-Wosornu specializes in interventional spine and sports medicine treatments, helping people achieve high physical and athletic performance at all stages of life through “holistic mind-body development” and therapies. She approaches her work with a sense of compassion and innovation. Physiatry allows “my experiences as a physician, athlete and public health advocate to dovetail,” she says.

She is also a co-founder of BambooAbility, an initiative focused on mobility equipment.

“For persons with disabilities in low-resource and tropical settings, barriers to mobility and physical activity are steep. Our initiative, BambooAbility, sees the development and design for manufacture of low-cost, durable, sustainable, purpose-built personal mobility equipment in order to support wheelchair users and others with mobility impairment in low-resource and tropical settings.”

Dr. Sten Vermund is a pediatrician and infectious disease epidemiologist focused on diseases of low and middle income countries. His work on HIV-HPV interactions among women in Bronx methadone programs motivated a change in the 1993 CDC AIDS case surveillance definition and inspired cervical cancer screening programs launched within HIV/AIDS programs around the world. The thrust of his research has focused on health care access, adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, and prevention of  HIV transmission among general and key populations, including mother-to-child.  Dr. Vermund has become increasingly engaged in health policy, particularly around sustainability of HIV/AIDS programs and their expansion to non-communicable diseases, coronavirus pandemic response and prevention, and public health workforce development.