APPS Team
Meet the APPS Team – we are diverse both in experience and location!
Shams Syed
Shams Syed is originally from Bangladesh and raised in London. He received his medical degree from St. George's, University of London and subsequently practiced as an independent General Practitioner in the UK. He received his postgraduate public health training at University of Cambridge, and has experience within the British public health system. Subsequently, he trained in Preventive Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and is US Board Certified in Public Health & Preventive Medicine. Global health systems have been integral to his professional activities. He has been closely involved with a Health Systems Research Consortium working with six African and Asian countries. His experience in PAHO WHO has been at the sub-regional and country levels. At the sub-regional level he worked with seven Caribbean countries on strengthening health systems with a particular focus on surveillance systems. At the country level, he was the Advisor on Family and Community Health at the WHO Country Office in Trinidad and Tobago, which involved working closely with the Ministry of Health and front line health care professionals to improve the quality of the national health system. Dr. Syed is currently the Programme Manager for African Partnerships for Patient Safety based in WHO Headquarters in Geneva. He has led the development of the programme from inception.
Julie Storr
Julie Storr is a graduate nurse from the University of Manchester where she also trained as a Health Visitor. Julie has an MBA and has specialised in the prevention and control of infection within healthcare. Immediately prior to her current position Julie worked as Project Manager of the WHO World Alliance for Patient Safety's First Global Patient Safety Challenge, Clean Care is Safer Care. She was the technical lead for South East Asia and the Americas where she worked closely with WHO regional colleagues, senior clinicians and Ministries of Health in the implementation, scale-up and spread of a Multimodal Behaviour Change Strategy to improve essential infection prevention practices at the facility level. Julie was formerly Assistant Director, Infection Control, at the National Patient Safety Agency and Project Director of the cleanyourhands campaign. In this role Julie was instrumental in the development, evaluation and scale-up of a pioneering approach to improve hand hygiene in health care.. Julie has worked as a Clinical Governance Coordinator and Manager of the infection control service at the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals. She has published numerous articles on infection prevention and control, and was a contributing author of the WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Healthcare (2009). Julie is a member of the Board of the UK Infection Prevention Society. and Project Manager of African Partnerships for Patient Safety in England. She is also currently studying for a Doctorate in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore.
Joyce Dixon Hightower
Joyce Dixon Hightower is an American Physician trained in Family Medicine, with an extensive medical, administrative, educational and practical experience in Africa. She is fluent in English and French, having lived in both English and French speaking African countries. Prior to entering the field of medicine, she worked as a secondary school teacher in Kenya for 7 years, before returning to the USA to attend medical school. Joyce has a personal understanding of the issues facing health providers in rural areas. This was the inspiration for the medical team missions that she led each year up until 2001. Most recently, she worked in Kinshasa, DRC, for seven years where her efforts have focused on health project proposal writing and implementation, as well as small clinic development. In the last three years prior to joining the APPS team, she had been the administrative consultant tasked with laying the administrative and human resource foundation of a state of the art 300 bed hospital in Kinshasa, which opened in 2007. Dr. Hightower is the Project Manager for African Partnerships for Patient Safety in the Africa Region and has been based at the WHO Country Office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, since September 2009.
Dr. Jean Carlet
Dr. Jean Carlet has been trained in internal medicine, and medical intensive care at the University of Paris, in France. Until January 2008 he was Head of the Intensive Care Unit and the Infectious Diseases Department, as well as President of the Infectious Control Committee, at the Groupe Hospitalier Saint-Joseph in Paris. From January 2008 to January 2010, he has been medical director and Head of the Research and Safety Programme at the French Authority for Health (HAS). Dr. Carlet served as the past President of the National Committee for the Prevention of Nosocomial Infections (for the Ministry of Health), from 1992 to 2004. He has been President of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) from 1996 to 1998. He is a member of several working groups in the French Ministry of Health in the areas of proper usage of antibiotics, prevention of health care associated infections, hepatitis B and C, and emergent viral diseases. He is member of numerous scientific societies. He also serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Current Opinion in Critical Care Medicine, Journal of Critical Care, Hygienes, and Sepsis. Dr Carlet is currently supporting the development of the African Partnerships for Patient Safety programme in French speaking Europe and is based in France.
Rachel Gooden
Rachel Gooden studied History and African and Asian Studies at the University of Lancaster, Edge Hill College in the UK. She worked in international development as a volunteer with Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) based in China for 4 years where she worked with Chinese and Tibetan young people in English language teaching and then established a programme for VSO China on disability and HIV/AIDS issues. Back in the UK she worked with the Rwandan Charity ‘Survivors Fund’, the NHS Health Development Agency and with the charity, Marie Curie Cancer Care before gaining a Masters Degree with Distinction in Development Management, specializing in International Health, from the University of Wales, Swansea. She was the Project Manager of the WHO Patient Safety’s ‘Patients for Patient Safety’ programme for three years, helping to develop a global network of patients and families affected by medical harm, to share their experiences and work locally and nationally with their healthcare systems to make them safer. She has worked closely with regional colleagues across all six WHO geographical regions and has supported patients and families around the world to facilitate change. Rachel is currently the Community and Partnership Technical Officer, helping to ensure community perspectives are included in implementation and development of African Partnerships for Patient Safety.
Yvette Piebo
Yvette Piebo is from the Republic of Congo and is fully bilingual in French and English. She studied Administration at the Catholic University of Vauban, Lille, France. She has extensive experience in providing support to Disease Control Programmes at WHO AFRO Headquarters in Brazzaville. She also has experience at the sub-regional level through her work with Roll Back Malaria in Harare Zimbabwe, and has supported in-country support for numerous international meetings in Africa. Yvette is currently based at WHO Headquarters in Geneva and provides support to the entire African Partnerships for Patient Safety team.
Sepideh Bagheri Nejad
Sepideh Bagheri Nejad is a medical doctor and has been working in WHO Patient Safety and more specifically, in the First Global Patient Safety Challenge, Clean Care is Safer Care, since September 2007. She has joined African Partnerships for Patient Safety since summer 2009 serving as the liaison officer between the Programme and University of Geneva Hospitals (HUG). Sepideh has a technical focus on infection prevention and control in resource-limited settings. She is fluent in English and French.
Edward Kelley
Edward Kelley currently serves as Coordinator and Head of Strategic Programmes for WHO Patient Safety. His responsibilities include the development of new programmes and partnerships, oversight of WHO Patient Safety presence in London and Baltimore and leadership on several key programmes within WHO Patient Safety. Prior to joining WHO, Dr. Kelley directed the only ongoing national examination of health care quality and disparities in the United States as the Director of the US National Healthcare Reports for the US Department of Health and Human Services in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). These reports track levels and changes in quality of care for the American healthcare system at the national and state level as well as disparities in quality and access across priority populations. Dr. Kelley also directed the 28-country Health Care Quality Improvement (HCQI) Project of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. Formerly, Dr. Kelley served as a Quality Assurance Advisor for URC’s Quality and Performance Institute while also serving as Scientist in the Operations Research Division for the USAID-sponsored Quality Assurance Project (QAP) and Partnerships for Health Reform Project Plus (PHRPlus). In these capacities he worked for 10 years in West and North Africa and Latin America, directing research on the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness in Niger.
Komla Quevison
Komla Quevison is originally from Togo. He received his medical degree in Benin in 2005 and is trained in Epidemiology and Biostatistics (MPH) from the School of Public health of the “Université Libre de Bruxelles” in Belgium. Komla has worked as a medical doctor in health care facilities in both Togo and Benin and has also participated in public health studies in both countries. Komla currently provides technical support to African Partnership for Patient Safety, focused on a range of key resources for the programme.
Interns
Interns play a continual role in the APPS team. The programme is fortunate to have worked with a series of WHO Interns from across the world who have carried out specific projects focused on delivering APPS products for use in programme implementation. These global interns have been primed in the science of patient safety and form a network of young patient safety professionals passionate about global patient safety. Their contributions are, and continue to be invaluable.