Office of Public Health Practice & Training

Practice work highlight! The Avanzando Caminos Study aims to recruit Hispanic/Latino cancer survivors in San Antonio, Texas, to explore how social, structural, behavioral, and contextual factors affect survivorship. Cynthia Estrada Zuniga used the Transtheoretical Model to improve recruitment by identifying barriers and recommendations for developing culturally tailored, stage-specific strategies to build trust and increase participation.

Practice work highlight! Angela Weinberg serves as COO for Xaia Health, a clinical AI startup, where she led market entry strategy, brand differentiation, and operational infrastructure implementation. Her work applies public health principles of systems thinking, access, and care continuity to digital, precision, public mental health.

Practice work highlight! Advancing Maternal and Child Health in Ghana Through Frontline Training and Health Systems Strengthening

Ailinh Harris led the design and delivery of a 3-day maternal and child health workshop in Accra, Ghana, training 50 health workers on essential, life-saving topics in resource-limited settings. Erica Stephens developed a strong evaluation framework to measure learning, practice change, and program impact that helped strengthen accountability and support future scale-up.

Practice work highlight! Akua Darkoa Peprah serves as Team Lead for a TB pilot project in rural Ghana developed through Brazza International Foundation and partner organizations. She has led early-stage project development, partnership engagement, and strategic planning efforts to strengthen TB prevention, vaccination readiness, and early detection among underserved populations through community-centered, equity-focused approaches.

Practice work highlight! Isinene Onoabhagbe supported the Maryland Department of Health’s Center for To***co Prevention and Control through surveillance, geospatial analysis, and data visualization projects. Her work integrated to***co retailer density, social vulnerability, and chronic disease data to identify priority communities and strengthen evidence-based public health planning, communication, and to***co prevention efforts across Maryland.

Practice work highlight! Erika Ito contributed to CAF-Banco de Desarrollo de America Latina y el Caribe’s regional public health practice, including fieldwork in Quito, Ecuador, examining gaps between digital health investment and mental health integration in Latin America. Her analysis identified structural implementation gaps, generating actionable insights to support more coordinated, equitable digital health strategies across the region.

Practice work highlight! Yuka Iijima contributed to a UNICEF project developing a multi-country assessment framework for immunization-primary health care integration. She supported evidence synthesis, survey design, and framework development to help identify service delivery gaps, strengthen health systems, and inform equity-focused strategies to reach zero-dose and under-immunized children across countries.

Practice work highlight! Astha Ramaiya led technical assistance through the Gender Equity Unit to strengthen gender-responsive health information systems across the Data for Health initiative. She developed monitoring and evaluation frameworks, provided sustained support to country teams in Zambia, and created an innovative workshop model that builds local capacity to generate gender-sensitive evidence for equitable health policy and programming.

Congratulations to the 2025–2026 BSPH Excellence in Practice Award Winners!

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation (JHU/CORI) partnered with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance to estimate the optimal size and public health impact of a global mpox emergency vaccine stockpile. Using a mixed-methods approach integrating epidemiological modeling, cost-benefit analysis, and stakeholder engagement, the team's findings directly informed the Gavi Board's decision to establish an mpox emergency vaccine stockpile for rapid outbreak deployment in Gavi-eligible countries.

Congratulations to the 2025–2026 BSPH Excellence in Practice Award Winners!

Throughout the three years of Pandemic Agreement negotiations and following its adoption in May 2025, Alexandra Phelan represented the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and served as an expert, giving written and oral interventions. During formal sessions in Geneva as well as intersessional briefings, she provided extensive technical public health and legal guidance on critical issues, especially pathogen access and benefits sharing, pandemic prevention, and vaccine equity.