Washington, DC, April 6, 2017 – The American International Health Alliance (AIHA) is pleased to announce the appointment of five new members of our Board of Directors, while at the same time recognizing the dedication and commitment of three long-standing members who are retiring after more than two decades of service.
“We are excited to welcome our new Board members to the AIHA family,” said David Greeley, the organization’s President & CEO. “We are fortunate to have their combined wealth of knowledge and expertise on our side as we work to achieve AIHA’s vision of a world with access to quality healthcare for everyone, everywhere,” he said. “They embody the visionary spirit of AIHA and bring significant talent and energy to our mission of strengthening health systems in developing countries around the globe.”
Joining AIHA’s Board of Directors are:
Mary Lynn Carver is a communications executive with more than 25 years of experience in a variety of corporate and nonprofit organizations. Since 2015, Ms. Carver has served as the Chief Communications Officer and Vice President of Global Corporate Communications at General Mills in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this capacity, she is responsible for global communications strategy, including external, employee, corporate, and executive communications, as well as brand PR and crisis communications.
Charles R. Evans is President of the International Health Services Group (IHSG), a social enterprise he founded in 2007 to support health services development in underserved areas of the world. IHSG’s objective is to collaborate with established organizations to supplement their capabilities in healthcare management and development as they work to achieve their broader missions. Current projects are located in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Mr. Evans is also a Senior Advisor at Jackson Healthcare, an Atlanta-based consortium of companies that provide physician and clinician staffing, anesthesia management, and healthcare information technology solutions proven to improve clinical and financial outcomes to hospitals, health systems and physician groups throughout the United States. While serving in executive positions at the Memorial Medical Center of Jacksonville (Florida), Mr. Evans and his team participated in an AIHA hospital strengthening partnership with Murmansk, Russia.
Derek Feeley is President and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He previously served as IHI’s Executive Vice President and had executive-level responsibility for driving IHI’s strategy in five focus areas: Improvement Capability; Person- and Family-Centered Care; Patient Safety; Quality, Cost, and Value; and the Triple Aim. Prior to joining IHI, Mr. Feeley served as Director General for Health and Social Care in the Scottish Government and Chief Executive of the National Health Services (NHS) in Scotland. In that role, he was the principal advisor to the Scottish Government on health and healthcare policy, as well as on public service improvement. He also provided leadership to NHS Scotland’s 140,000 staff in their delivery of high-quality healthcare services.
Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Big Win Philanthropy, a foundation that invests in maternal, child, and reproductive health, nutrition, and education, among other areas. He is an adjunct professor with the Duke Global Health Institute at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and served as the 2016 R.L. Menschel Senior Leadership fellow at Harvard University’s Chan School of Public Health. From 2011 to 2013, Dr. Pate served as Minister of State for Health in Nigeria, where he helped mobilize more than US$1 billion in additional financing for primary health care, implemented innovative programs such as prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, clinical governance, and chaired the Presidential Task Force on Polio Eradication. He led Nigeria’s Saving One Million Lives Initiative and previously served as Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency from 2008-2011. Dr. Pate served as co-chair of the Harvard-London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine panel to review and advise the global health system on the lessons learned from the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak.
Dr. Debrework Zewdie is a Distinguished Scholar at the Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy of the City University of New York (CUNY) and Senior Leadership Fellow at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a committed, dynamic, and inspiring public health leader with more than 35 years of experience in international development. Most of her career has been dedicated to mitigating the cross-sectorial impact of the HIV epidemic, women’s empowerment, and poverty. Over the course of 16 years, Dr. Zewdie has held several key leadership positions at The World Bank, including Manager of the AIDS Campaign for Africa and Lead Population and Reproductive Health Specialist for the Africa Region. During her tenure, she conceptualized and managed the groundbreaking US$1 billion multi-country HIV/AIDS Program that changed the AIDS funding landscape and pioneered the large scale multi-sectoral response with direct financing to civil society and the private sector. As Director of The World Bank’s Global HIV/AIDS Program, she provided strategic vision and direction for the coordinated resource mobilization efforts of a global HIV/AIDS funding portfolio totaling US$4 billion. Dr. Zewdie also served in several pivotal roles that contributed to the transformation of The Global Fund, serving as Interim Director of Country Programs, Deputy Executive Director, and Deputy General Manager.
“As we welcome our five new Board members, we also want to recognize the invaluable contributions of four long-term members who helped launch AIHA when the organization was founded in 1992 and are stepping down today,” said AIHA Board Chair Dr. Dennis Andrulis.
“Mr. Daniel Bourque, Attorneys Henry Fernandez and Larry Gage, and Dr. Donald Fisher, who sadly passed away just last week, helped establish the organization, develop its mission, and nurture its growth over the past 25 years,” he said. “Their dedication and commitment to AIHA is laudable and they will certainly be missed as we work to grow and expand in the years to come.”
AIHA is a nonprofit organization working to advance global health by helping countries with limited resources build sustainable institutional and human resource capacity. Through twinning partnerships and other initiatives, AIHA provides technical assistance using the knowledge and skills of experienced health and allied professionals to strengthen overburdened health systems.
Since its founding in 1992, AIHA has established and managed more than 175 twinning partnerships and initiatives in 34 countries spanning the globe. Through these projects, some 150 US hospitals or health systems and more than 60 schools of the health professions have played a critical role in international health systems strengthening and citizen diplomacy efforts, effectively leveraging overall donor funding with a near 1:1 match of in-kind contributions of professional time, equipment, and other resources.
AIHA operates under various cooperative agreements and grants from US and international donor agencies, including the US President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR); the US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA); the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the US Agency for International Development (USAID); and the World Bank.