Explore Global Health with Rob Murphy, MD

As a first-generation Chinese-American, whose parents left China during the communist revolution, Kathryn Chu, MD, knew early on in life that being raised in an upper middle class family in the Midwestern United States was “an accident of birth.” This knowledge propelled her into a career in global health, specifically humanitarian and global surgery. Now, as the Director of the Centre for Global Surgery at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, Chu is dedicated to shaping a world with equitable access to quality surgical care for all. In this episode, Chu details her career path to global health and her goals for the future.

In this episode of Explore Global Health, Dr. Rob Murphy talks with Dr. Shannon Galvin, an infectious disease specialist and HIV researcher who was recently named the Director of Global Clinical Outreach at the Robert J. Havey, MD Institute for Global Health. She shares valuable insight into how to balance personal and professional happiness and how she uses her experience to better understand the needs of Northwestern’s clinical partners around the world and harness human capital within the university to help solve problems in global health.

Northwestern Medicine primary care physician Robert J. Havey, MD, has always been motivated by patient relationships. As he advanced in his career, these relationships shaped his approach to the future of global health. As both the namesake of the recently endowed Havey Institute for Global Health and deputy director for the Ryan Family Center for Global Primary Care, Havey shares insight on ensuring the longevity of global health efforts for generations to come.

Forging a career path in global surgery was not on the radar for Juliet Lumati, MD, MPH when she was growing up in a poor area of Lagos, Nigeria. But after her family immigrated to Chicago during her childhood, she excelled in school and was drawn to biology and political science and eventually decided to pursue a career in the field. In this episode, Lumati, now an assistant professor of Surgical Oncology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, talks about her challenges as an underrepresented minority pursuing a career in global surgery and the progress she has made to bridge the gap between clinical medicine and healthcare policy in low- and middle-income countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, where she is working to improve access to cancer care.

In this episode, Lisa Hirschhorn, MD, MPH, talks about her trailblazing career filled with challenges and opportunities that led her to become Director of the Ryan Family Center for Global Primary Care at the Havey Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Ashti Doobay-Persaud, MD, dreamed of a career in global health before she knew what to call it. Although she knew the general career path she wanted to follow, she struggled to find training opportunities specific to global health. Now an international leader in global health education, Doobay-Persaud has been building the global health training she wishes she could have had. At Northwestern, she founded the Master’s in Global Health and McGaw Global Health Clinical Scholars program

Carlos del Rio, MD, didn’t set out to launch a career in global health, but while training to be a cardiologist in the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic took hold and forever changed the way he approached medicine and his career. In this episode, Dr. del Rio talks with Dr. Murphy about his path from medical school in his home country of Mexico, to his many leadership positions in global health and at Emory University School of Medicine. He also explains how the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics offer many lessons for the next generation of people interested in global health.

Robert Breiman, MD, FIDSA, FASTMH, is an internationally known researcher whose career in global health, infectious diseases, and epidemiology has taken him around the world and into many leadership roles within the Centers for Disease Control, Today, he is combining his many skills and interests to address the growing cancer burden in Africa, by establishing the Infectious Diseases and Oncology Research Institute at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In this episode, Nadia Sam-Agudu, MD, Director of the Global Pediatrics Program at the University of Minnesota Medical School, talks about her career as a physician-scientist in global health. From a childhood in Ghana that inspired her to pursue a career in medicine to becoming a driving force in the field of implementation science in global health, Sam-Agudu talks about her unique journey and what inspires her work.

Sandi Lam, MD, MBA, is a Lurie Children's world renowned specialist in the areas of epilepsy surgery and neurovascular surgery and a leader in building capacity for a sustainable program to elevate pediatric epilepsy care in Uganda. But her path into medicine and global health wasn’t linear. In this episode, Lam talks about how a career in sales with a technology startup led her down the path she is on today and how she is working to change global pediatric epilepsy care through collaboration and innovation.