About Tulane Office of Global Health

Our Mission

The mission of the Tulane Office of Global Health (OGH) is to foster interdisciplinary, collaborative research opportunities for faculty across Tulane University and to promote global health research training opportunities for Tulane students. Offices are located in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and in an overseas office in Lima, Peru (HOLA, or the Health Office for Latin America).

In this era of interdisciplinary global health, research teams pooling expertise in diverse areas, such as human behavior, design of the built environment, ecology and climate, biomedical engineering, social and cultural mores, clinical tropical medicine, and health access and societal rights, global health is not just of interest to faculty in medicine and public health. It is an increasingly important focus area for universities, with potential relevance and impact for faculty and students from schools within Tulane University.

The Tulane Office of Global Health includes representation from across the university, including many of the schools (see OGH Steering Committee, below). Additionally, the Office of Global Health has collaborative relationships with international organizations from a variety of countries, including Argentina, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Suriname, and Sierra Leone. 

For faculty, OGH provides support through:

• Hosting global health networking events to bring faculty interested in global health together and formulate working groups able to respond to global health initiatives. Expertise in global health at Tulane spans multiple schools, including Science and Engineering, Social Work, Liberal Arts, Public Health, and Medicine.
• Providing guidance for faculty on developing research and training program proposals with global health partners, special considerations for international research, and how to create a viable implementation plan for research based overseas.
• Providing supplemental administrative support for multidisciplinary global health training grants for NIH, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and other major donor agencies.
• Providing seed money for short-term travel or meetings to facilitate new global health research collaborations or grant applications.
• Sponsoring university-wide presentations on global health topics for faculty and students.

For students, OGH provides support through:

• Administrating and publicizing global health research training opportunities provided by training grants led by Tulane faculty. (NOTE: OGH does not maintain a database of global health research opportunities for students that are not part of Tulane-led training grants, and it does not manage study abroad programs.)
• Supporting global health interest groups across the university.

Leadership of OGH

Director: Richard A. Oberhelman, MD (oberhel@tulane.edu)
Professor and Associate Dean for Global Health, Department of Tropical Medicine, and Margaret W. and Eamon M. Kelly Distinguished Chair in International Development, Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine

Senior Program Manager: Robert Palestina, MPH (rpalesti@tulane.edu)

OGH Steering Committee:

Adeno Addis, JSD
W.R. Irby Chair and W. Ray Forrester Professor of Public and Constitutional Law
Tulane School of Law

Iñaki Alday, MArch
Dean & Koch Chair in Architecture
Tulane University School of Architecture

Carolyn L. Bayer, PhD
Assistant Professor
Biomedical Engineering
Tulane School of Science and Engineering

Pierre Buekens, MD, PhD
W.H. Watkins Professor of Epidemiology
Tulane SPHTM

Arachu Castro, PhD, MPH
Samuel Z. Stone Chair of Public Health in Latin America
Associate Professor, Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences
Tulane SPHTM

Mary A. Clark, PhD
Associate Professor of Political Science
Tulane School of Liberal Arts

Regardt J. Ferreira, PhD
Associate Professor
Tulane School of Social Work

Maureen Y. Lichtveld, MD, MPH
Professor and Chair, Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences
Tulane SPHTM

Anjali Niyogi, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor, Department of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics
Co-Director, Resident Initiative in Global Health at Tulane
Tulane University School of Medicine

Valerie Paz Soldan, PhD, MPH
Deputy Director, Office of Global Health
Director, Tulane Health Office for Latin America
Associate Professor of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences
Tulane SPHTM

Katherine K. Raymond, PhD
Professor of Practice
Tulane School of Science and Engineering

John S. Schieffelin, MD, MSPH
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Internal Medicine
Tulane University School of Medicine