Center for Refugee and Disaster Response

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Our People: Center Faculty

Gilbert Burnham, MD, PhD, is a co-director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins. He has extensive experience in emergency preparedness and response, particularly in humanitarian needs assessment, program planning, and evaluation that address the needs of vulnerable populations, and the development and implementation of training programs. He also has extensive experience in the development and evaluation of community-based health program planning and implementation, health information system development, management and analysis, and health system analysis. He has worked with numerous humanitarian and health development programs for multilateral and non-governmental organizations, regional health departments, ministries of health (national and district level), and communities in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Two major current activities include the reconstruction of health services in Afghanistan and the strengthening of Schools of Public Health in East Africa.

Thomas Kirsch, MD, MPH, is a co-director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins. He is an emergency physician and expert in health care management, public health and disaster planning and response. He serves as the National Physician Advisor for the American Red Cross Disaster Health Services, and has consulted for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Center for Disease Control and the United States Agency for International Development (Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance). His current activities include strengthening the emergency care and disaster preparedness system in Azerbaijan and creating system for organizing the ‘informal networks’ that arise in the response to a disaster.

Judith Bass, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the Department of Mental Health with a joint appointment (in process) at the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Last winter she participated in the WHO sponsored workshop Improving outcome research on mental health and psychosocial programs in post-disaster and (post)-conflict settings. Her research interests include designing and evaluating methods for assessing mental health and mental illness in non-Western cultures with the intention for using these assessments to investigate effectiveness of innovative prevention and intervention strategies. Through this work, she is committed to improving the evidence-base for mental health and psychosocial programming in low-resource settings. Current projects include collaborating with NGOs on evaluating psychosocial programs for children in crisis in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe and an evaluation of a group counseling intervention for conflict affected populations in Aceh, Indonesia.

Paul Bolton, MBBS, DMTH, MPH, MSc, is an Associate Research Scientist in the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. A physician by training, since 1988 he has worked directly or as a technical consultant with various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in war, disaster, and development settings. His primary areas of expertise involve cross-cultural assessment with a focus on mental health and psychosocial programming and the application of these methods to project assessment, monitoring, and evaluation. Dr. Bolton has worked as a consultant on monitoring and evaluation (M and E) of health projects for many of the major US-based and European NGOs. This work has included evaluation of programs, designing interventions and M and E systems, and developing courses and manuals for humanitarian organizations to conduct their own ongoing cross-cultural assessments and M and E. Dr. Bolton also conducts programmatic research in collaboration with these same organizations. The focus of this work is the development and/or adaptation of new research findings and methods that can be used by service providers to answer questions of programmatic importance.

Daksha Brahmbhatt, RN, MPH, is a nurse educator and the manager of the Research Coordinator Training Program at the Institute for Johns Hopkins Nursing (IJHN). At IJHN she plans, develops, manages and evaluates educational programs for nurses and non-nurses. Ms. Brahmbhatt lectures in Fundamentals for the Research Coordinator, Nursing in Global and Humanitarian Relief, Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response, and Consent Has to Be Informed. In addition, she volunteers her time to directly assist in disaster relief in places like Pakistan following the earthquake in 2005 with International Rescue Committee, and with the American Red Cross, following hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Shannon Doocy, PhD, received her PhD in International Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2004. She is currently a research associate with the Johns Hopkins Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. Her research focuses on populations affected by disasters and conflict, including both refugees and internally displaced populations. Within the emergency context, her areas of interest include population-based assessments, mortality, nutrition and food security, livelihoods and cash interventions, and monitoring and evaluation of health programs. Her recent research involves coping capacity and vulnerability in Ethiopia; an effectiveness trial of a point-of-use water-treatment product in camps for displaced populations in Liberia; demographic and nutritional assessments of conflict-affected populations in northeastern Sudan; tsunami-related research in Aceh, Indonesia; assessment of food security in North Korea; assistance to projects in Sierra Leone, the West Bank, Nepal, northern China, Iraq and Afghanistan.

W. Courtland Robinson, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. He has been involved in refugee research and policy analysis since 1979. The non-governmental organizations and academic institutions with whom Dr. Robinson has worked include the Indochina Refugee Action Center, Save the Children, World Education, the U.S. Committee for Refugees, the Asian Research Center for Migration, and Mercy Corps. He is the author of numerous studies on refugee issues, particularly in Asia. His book, Terms of Refuge: The Indochinese Exodus and the International Response (1998, Zed Books), was selected by the Humanitarian Times as one of the ten best books for 1999. His current research activities include famine and distress migration in North Korea, demographic assessment methods in complex emergencies, and global patterns in migration and health.

Alexander Vu, MD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and at the Department of International Health. He is boarded in Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine. He received his MPH in International Health at JHSPH. He is currently the International Emergency Medicine Fellowship director at the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. He is involved in development work and emergency preparedness/disaster response. He has responded to the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the Katrina Hurricane and coordinated the response for the Pakistan earthquake. He has also worked in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Nepal and Bangladesh for hospital emergency preparedness and helped to develop an emergency medicine trauma curriculum for Azerbaijan. He is currently involved in research and monitoring & evaluation of HIV/AIDS programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Uganda.

Earl Wall, MS, is the Director of Program Development at the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. Mr. Wall has more than 20 years of experience in the developing world. He spent 17 years working for CARE International in Sierra Leone, Russia, Honduras, Guatemala, Egypt and for five years was the Country Director in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. Mr. Wall also was the Director of CARE in Kosovo and Macedonia. Previous to CARE, Mr. Wall served in 1985 as the environmental health coordinator for International Rescue Committee in Sudan, where he developed and maintained water systems in 10 refugee camps. Mr. Wall served with the Peace Corps in Costa Rica, from 1980–82, where he worked in health and community development. Mr. Wall has a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Health and a Master of Science Degree in Environmental Health Management (with a minor in Public Health) from Oregon State University.

William Weiss, DrPH, MPH, is a public health, development and training specialist with over 15 years of experience in working with and supporting health and development programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America. As Senior Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor for JHU’s TSEHAI project, he provides technical assistance for monitoring and evaluating (M&E) this project’s support for anti-retroviral treatment of persons living with HIV/AIDS across four regions of Ethiopia. This includes support for monitoring care of patients, monitoring performance of facilities providing treatment and the aggregate performance across facilities in the four regions. At the JHU Center for Refugee and Disaster Response he provides support to PVO/NGO field staff in design, collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative methods useful for: (1) assessing health problems, knowledge and practices among refugees and internally displaced persons during transition and resettlement; and (2) participatory planning to solve health and development problems. Dr. Weiss received his DrPH degree in international health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Mr. Weiss’s MA degree in International Affairs is from the George Washington University with a focus in international development. Mr. Weiss has lived in Latin America and Asia and speaks Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.