Tufts Faculty
Tufts Faculty
Keywords: human resilience as a function of human adaptation; psychosocial and mental well-being in post-conflict and post-disaster settings; water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion in East Africa, Horn of Africa, India and Afghanistan; international humanitarian policy and public health; social-ecological resilience and sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Her main research interests are the socio-cultural determinants of resilience; the role of social capital (social support, social cohesion, informal and formal institutions that sustain shared values, trust and reciprocity) in promoting and sustaining psychosocial and mental well-being. Dr. Almedom is also engaged in advising masters and doctoral students whose research projects range from ethnobotany, cultural and social-ecological resilience to water resources management and sustainability. She serves as core faculty advisor in the Water: Science, Systems and Society (WSSS) cross-school Program; and several of the undergraduate-focused programs of the Institute for Global Leadership including EPIIC, Voices from the Field, Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and the newly established local student-led, precedent-setting Chapter of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Dr Almedom brings a holistic international perspective to the study of health, culture and sustainability. Dr. Almedom directs the Luce Program, which has offered highly valued interdisciplinary research and internship opportunities in public health to Tufts students (graduate and undergraduate) both on campus and in the field; including the competitive Luce-IGL student research scholarship in collaboration with the International Relations Program. She is also collaborating with the MPH Program on a new course, “Media, Health and Complex Emergencies” to be offered in 2007. More Information.
Keywords: diarrheal disease, E. coli toxins, malnutrition, HIV, India, Vietnam, Argentina, South Africa, Injection drug use
Dr. Gorbach is a Professor of Medicine, Public Health, and Microbiology at the Medical School. He is also a Professor at the Nutrition School and former Chair of the Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases and of the Division of Nutrition and Infection. He has been involved in research related to global issues in nutrition and infectious disease for the last 45 years. He worked in Calcutta in the 1960’s, he and his groups made the original description of toxin production by E. coli bacteria (ETEC) as causative agents for watery diarrheal disease. At the same time he worked with colleagues in South India to describe the epidemic form of tropical sprue. Dr. Gorbach has been continuously funded by the NIH for more than 30 years to conduct research in diarrheal disease, nutritional and metabolic status in HIV, and manifestations of HIV infection in individuals with co-morbid hepatitis B and C . He is also working with a group of investigators in South Africa on manifestations of HIV disease in a pediatric population, in which the role of malnutrition and diarrheal disease is quantified. He has worked in Mexico and other regions in South America as well as in Africa and India. He is currently the PI of a NIDA funded study of metabolic abnormalities in drug using populations in Hanoi Vietnam, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India and Buenos Aires, Argentina. He sits on the CFAR executive committee and is the director of the GI, Nutrition and Metabolism Core, which has supported work in India and Vietnam, and he is the PI of the NIDA funded Center for Drug Abuse and AIDS Research (CDAAR).