Peo steering committee

The corresponding and lead Principal Investigator for this grant. She gained invaluable experience building an NCD care program in Rwanda that now serves over 6,000 patients.  She also served as Special Advisor on NCD to Rwanda’s Ministry of Health, providing technical expertise, and facilitating coordination and stakeholder engagement to develop the nation’s strategic plan for the prevention and control of NCDs.  Furthermore, she established Rwanda’s first Cancer Center of Excellence, introducing an oncology electronic medical records system and developing the first national cancer protocols.  She has returned to her native country of Botswana, where she holds appointments at Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership and Botswana’ Ministry of Health’s NCD program. Dr. Tapela’s clinical, programmatic, research, and capacity building skills are outstanding and she has demonstrated the ability to promote political will and strategic vision sharing and action for NCDs. Undoubtedly, many of the responsibilities that will come with serving as the lead PI on this grant will tap into Dr. Tapela’s performance strengths.

 

Dr Scott Dryden Peterson has dedicated the past 7 years to developing an oncology research infrastructure in Botswana. He is well qualified to lead this project aimed at developing strategies to study the impact of early HIV treatment on cancer risk. Programmatic and research structures we have developed for HIV, can be adapted to leapfrog research in non-communicable disease. He has completed clinical training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Medicine and Infectious Diseases, including a year of dedicated HIV training. For 18 months he has lived, researched, and provided specialized HIV care in Botswana and over the past 6 years he has continued to spend 2-3 months annually in Botswana. Dr Scott initiated a large cohort of patients with cancer in Botswana that serves as the foundation for the investigations planned in this study. Importantly, he has also developed an understanding of the clinical context and has acquired a network of colleagues to support an ambitious but feasible research project. He is experienced with clinical study design, implementation, and regulatory adherence in Botswana. In the US, his clinical expertise is in the diagnosis of management of infections in patients treated for cancer. His training and experience have prepared him to important contributions to the proposed project.

 

Dr. Grover is interested in addressing the growing global cancer burden by focusing on public health endeavors and cost-effective clinical initiatives to improve access to care and outcomes of care in developing countries. Her research interests include racial and ethnic disparities in cancer care and outcomes, HIV-related malignancies, implementation and up-scaling of prevention and treatment programs in low resource settings. Since 2011 she has been working with the Botswana-UPENN partnership in developing an oncology program in Botswana. Her research will be focused on epidemiology of HPV related cancers (cervical, head and neck and anal) and treatment outcomes in patients with HIV and malignancies in Botswana.

 

A Lecturer at the University of Botswana and holds a research appointment with Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership.  He has been researching cardiovascular complications of HIV and antiretroviral treatment in a cohort Botswana patients. He has shown great promise as a Fogarty and NIH funded researcher and he has taken on increasing leadership roles within the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Botswana, including mentoring several medical students and medical residents on research projects.

 

Dr. Motsumi is a lecturer in General Surgery at University of Botswana, Faculty of Medicine. He has special interest in trauma. His interest in trauma developed while training in Cape town, South Africa, where upon completing his surgical training he held a post of Junior consultant at Groote Schuur hospital trauma center for 8 months. He is a passionate ATLS instructor and member of the ATLSCAPE Faculty since November 2012. He is a member of the Peo Project, a multidisciplinary, multi-institution and multinational collaboration research team with long term goal of developing a regional center of research excellence led by emerging cadre of local researchers focusing mainly on NCDs. Dr Motsumi’s personal mission is to have an impact in the society through research, collaborative work and evidence-driven clinical practice. He is eager to learn, participate and contribute to the profession through good clinical practice and research.

 

 

The Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Botswana. He is a qualified and registered medical practitioner and professor of medical physiology. He has over twenty years of experience in teaching undergraduate, postgraduate and supervision of doctoral students; and a researcher. Prof Mashalla also possess a vast experience and skills in management of academic institutions, research management and management of donor funded projects. He also has a vast experience in qualitative and quantitative research; conduct of research involving human subjects and in the monitoring and evaluation of implementation of research projects. He has all through worked closely with ministries of health, education and research and development institutions and NGOs, therefore conversant with relevant policies and operational procedures. During his academic career, he was actively involved in collaborative biomedical research both in basic research and applied research.

 

I have the skills and expertise in biostatistics and possess leadership qualities that enable me to play an important role in providing training in methodology to our first cadre of researchers selected for the grant entitled “those who need to be equipped. My leadership and mentoring qualities are evidence by my successfully co-supervising two Ph.D. students, one in survival analysis as evidenced by publication they led in. I have participated in a multi-disciplinary NIH-funded study “Adolescent Study” as senior key-person (Co-PI) responsible for methodological and data analysis aspects on the study. Recently I collaborated with staff members from Faculty of Medicine in a Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) “Rural Exposure” as a biostatistician. I have collaborated with other researchers from areas like Population studies, Food Science, Physical Education, etc. producing peer-reviewed journal publications.

 

Mr Ari Ho Foster holds a Master’s of Science in Applied Epidemiology from the Autonomous University of Guerrero, completed concurrently with a two-year CIET/Health Canada internship to develop local public health infrastructure in several provinces of Atlantic Canada. From 2002-4, he managed a large nationally-representative study of HIV risk and sexual violence in South Africa, capturing data from over 280,000 youth. He served as a reviewer for a systematic review of HIV prevention programs in 2005-6. In 2007-8, Mr. Ho-Foster was an investigator for a ten-country study of HIV and sexual violence knowledge, attitudes and practices, with management-level involvement in all aspects of the study, and particular focus in design, instrument development, data management and analysis. From 2007-9, Mr. Ho-Foster also was a faculty member on a multi-country initiative to build Southern African research capacity to implement randomized trials in HIV prevention research. In recent years, he was an investigator on a cluster-randomized control trial, assessing the impact of several community level prevention interventions on HIV infection rates (biological endpoints) in communities across Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland. He joined the Botswana-UPenn Partnership as an epidemiologist in June 2010 and took over as Country Operations Director in March 2012.