Core Investigator Team
GAPPS is a collaborative undertaking by a team of international investigators with specific expertise in countries disproportionately affected by preterm labor and stillbirth.
Craig E. Rubens, MD, PhD
Executive Director
GAPPS
The Executive Director of GAPPS since its inception, Dr. Rubens is Division Chief of Pediatric Infectious Disease at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He is a Professor of Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine, and an Adjunct Professor of Microbiology. At Seattle Children’s Research Institute, he is a member of the Center for Childhood Infections and Prematurity Research and directs a research program on the molecular pathogenesis of bacterial perinatal infections. His laboratory has recently been developing a model to understand the mechanisms of infection-induced preterm labor and premature births; insights from this work have begun to identify new means of preventing or treating preterm labor and perinatal bacterial infections as well as improving reproductive outcomes.
Thomas N. Hansen, MD
Chief Executive Officer
Seattle Children's
Dr. Hansen is the Chief Executive Officer of Seattle Children's and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Formerly, he was CEO of Columbus Children’s Hospital and Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the Ohio State University School of Medicine. Dr. Hansen’s research has focused on the role of reactive oxygen species in respiratory complications of preterm birth. In recent years, he has studied the role of glutathione in protecting infants from oxidant injury. He has begun to explore the relationships between inflammation, oxidant injury, and preterm birth and has recently developed a very low cost mechanical ventilator for infants born in countries with limited health care resources.
Fernando Barros, MD, PhD
Professor of the Post-Graduate Course in Health and Behavior
Universidade Católica de Pelotas
Brazil
Dr. Barros is Professor of the Post-Graduate Course in Health and Behavior at the Universidade Católica de Pelotas in Brazil. Since the mid-1980s, he has also worked as coordinator of the Epidemiology Research Centre in Pelotas, as Professor of Epidemiology at the Universidade Federal de Pelotas, and as an Overseas Associate in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Department of Public Health and Policy. During 1998-2006, he worked as a research scientist of the PAHO/WHO Latin American Center for Perinatology and Human Development in Montevideo, Uruguay. Dr. Barros has research and consultancy experience in more than 30 low-income countries. He has particular expertise in cohort, cross-sectional, case-control, experimental, and quasi-experimental studies, and he is the author of about 200 publications on maternal, perinatal, and pediatric epidemiology and health services evaluation. Among his most recent projects are longitudinal studies of children born in Pelotas, child health and nutrition surveys in several Brazilian states, and evaluation of inequities in child health in low- and middle-income countries.
Maneesh Batra, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor, Neonatology
Department of Pediatrics
University of Washington School of Medicine
Dr. Batra is an Assistant Professor in the Neonatology Division of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He is an attending physician in the neonatal intensive care units of both Seattle Children’s Hospital and the University of Washington Medical Center. His international clinical experience includes work in Manado, Indonesia; Harare, Zimbabwe; Managua, Nicaragua; and Kiwoko, Uganda, where for the past five years he has been involved with the medical direction of a rural special care baby nursery. In his research work, he has addressed pregnancy outcomes in Washington State and works with local physicians in Bangladesh to validate neurodevelopmental screening instruments for community health workers to identify infants and children with impairments. Dr. Batra has also taught widely, including in programs in Bangladesh, India, Guatemala, and Uganda as well as in the United States.
Zulfiqar Bhutta, MBBS, FRCP, FRCPCH, FCPS, PhD
Husein Laljee Dewraj Professor & Chairman of the Department of Paediatrics & Child Health
Aga Khan University Hospital
Pakistan
Dr. Bhutta is the Husein Laljee Dewraj Professor & Chairman of the Department of Paediatrics & Child Health at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. As the head of a large research program with a focus on effectiveness interventions, Dr. Bhutta and his colleagues have focused on newborn and child survival, and they have conducted global reviews in issues of community-based perinatal care, interventions related to stillbirth prevention, and most recently, a comprehensive review of maternal and child nutrition interventions. Dr. Bhutta has been a lead member of several Lancet series related to child survival, health systems, newborn survival, and maternal and child undernutrition. He is President of the Asia Oceania Federation of Perinatal Societies and serves on the board of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health and as a Foundation Council member of the Global Forum for Health Research.
Michael G. Gravett, MD
Director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine
Vice Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
University of Washington School of Medicine
Dr. Gravett is Professor and Director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine and Vice Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, where he specializes in perinatal infectious disease, prematurity prevention, maternal/fetal immunology, and proteomics. In the decade before he moved to the UW, Dr. Gravett worked as Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and as Director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University and as affiliate associate scientist and senior scientist of reproductive services at the Oregon Regional (later National) Primate Research Center.
Maureen Kelley, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Adjunct Assistant Professor in the departments of Medical History and Ethics and Philosophy
University of Washington School of Medicine
Dr. Kelley is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the departments of Medical History and Ethics and Philosophy. She previously served on the philosophy and global health faculties of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and in the Department of Medicine and Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. She conducts research on ethical issues in pediatric global health, international research ethics, and moral conflict resolution. Dr. Kelley has served on the policy, ethics, and law core for the Southeast Regional Center of Excellence for Emerging Infections and Biodefense and on the advisory committee for the National Institutes of Health Framework Grant in Global Health at UAB. Since 2004, she has worked in Tomsk, Siberia, to develop a research ethics program under the National Institutes of Health-Comprehensive International Program of Research on AIDS (NIH-CIPRA). She is currently collaborating with the University of Zambia School of Medicine to assess the burden of HIV/AIDS on orphans and vulnerable children in Lusaka. At Seattle Children’s Hospital, she is a member of the ethics committee and ethics consult service.
Joy Lawn, BMedSci, MB BS, MRCP (Paeds), MPH
Senior Research and Policy Adviser
Save the Children: Saving Newborn Lives
South Africa
Dr. Lawn is Senior Research and Policy Adviser with Saving Newborn Lives-Save the Children-US, a program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. An African-born pediatrician and perinatal epidemiologist, Dr. Lawn has worked in several African countries, providing newborn care services and training. From the late 1990s through 2004, she worked at the WHO Collaborating Center in Reproductive Health, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Institute of Child Health in London. Dr. Lawn co-lead the Neonatal Group of the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group, which developed the first systematic cause of death estimates for four million neonatal deaths each year. Based in South Africa, Dr. Lawn works with governments and partners to integrate and scale-up newborn care, particularly in Africa. She recently co-led a team of 60 authors from 14 organizations working on the book, Opportunities for Africa’s Newborns. She also serves on the core "Countdown" planning group.
Cynthia Stanton, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Stanton is Assistant Professor in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Her research interests focus on maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity in developing countries. She has been involved in efforts to improve measurement of maternal and perinatal outcomes, measurement via surveys, censuses, routine data sources, and qualitative efforts. Her recent work has focused on developing country access to cesarean section, management of the third stage of labor, use of labor induction and augmentation, and classification systems for obstetric fistula. Among her recent publications are two 2006 articles in The Lancet, on socioeconomic differentials in caesarean rates in low-income countries and an analysis of stillbirth rates in 190 middle- and low-income countries.
Cesar G. Victora, MD, PhD
Professor of Epidemiology
Universidade Federal de Pelotas
Brazil
Dr. Victora has since 1977 served as Professor of Epidemiology at the Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Brazil and as Coordinator of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center in Maternal and Child Nutrition. He has also worked as an ad hoc consultant to the World Health Organization, UNICEF and World Bank, and as a visiting professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. In the course of work in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Dr. Victora has designed, implemented, supervised, and analyzed findings from research studies on maternal and child health, with emphasis on the study of inequalities in health and effectiveness of large-scale programs. Among his recent publications is a 2003 Lancet article on “applying an equity lens to child health and mortality.”
Fourth from left: Dr. Mario Merialdi of the World Health Organization, responsible for developing the WHO Art for Health program.