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Office Hours

We are excited to meet you and support your innovations! To learn more about InnovateHealth Yale and to get connected with many other resources, please schedule office hours with Fatema Basrai, Managing Director.

Meet the IHY Team

  • Faculty Director

    Lecturer and Senior Fellow in Public Health (Health Policy); Faculty Director, InnovateHealth Yale

    Kaakpema, who goes by “KP,” is a global entrepreneur and public health practitioner with experience working across the public and private sectors in the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. He is a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and the Faculty Director for InnovateHealth Yale. Kaakpema Co-Founded InOn Health in 2018. The company improved access to care in the United States using digital communication channels and consumer insights to better connect multicultural populations to healthcare services. Prior to InOn Health, he also founded access.mobile International. access.mobile was a global digital health company that developed solutions to improve access to health information and services in African countries. KP served as one of the early employees of the Clinton Health Access Initiative and worked as a management consultant for Dalberg Global Development Advisors. He is a member of the External Equity and Innovation Advisory Board for the American Medical Association and was appointed by Governor Jared Polis to serve on the Colorado eHealth Commission, which he chairs. Kaakpema received a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Brown University and a Master of Public Health from the Yale School of Public Health. He is a 2023 Rock Health Top 50 in Digital Health Luminaries honoree.
  • Managing Director

    Fatema currently serves as the Managing Director of InnovateHealth Yale and the Sustainable Health Initiative at Yale University, where she leads initiatives to support ventures in global health innovation. With over a decade of expertise in these sectors, she is a passionate advocate for social change, mentoring the next generation of social entrepreneurs and guiding innovators to turn their lived experiences into impactful ventures. At Yale, she works closely with students, faculty, and staff to develop and scale innovations that address pressing societal needs. Her leadership is grounded in a deep commitment to empowering the next generation of innovators, helping them transform their vision into tangible impact. With over a decade of experience in both the health and education sectors, Fatema brings a strategic and holistic approach to leadership, venture development, and mentoring. Her expertise spans from guiding social impact leaders to overcome internal barriers and harness their unique strengths, to coaching them through the complexities of launching and scaling ventures that create sustainable change. Fatema’s career began in education, where she held leadership roles in nonprofits and public service, including serving as Vice Chair of the San Antonio Independent School District’s $450 million bond initiative. She has been a recognized voice on national platforms such as DreamWeek and Leadership for Educational Equity, and co-founded SA RISE, a community organization focused on educational equity. Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education, Fatema’s work is driven by her lived experience as a first-generation US college student and immigrant, and her passion for creating transformative, inclusive change.
  • Christina is an MPH student in the Social and Behavioral Sciences department at Yale School of Public Health. Her work focuses on the intersection of program development, communications, and outreach, aiming to connect communities with essential healthcare resources. Driven by a passion for advancing health equity, Christina is committed to developing sustainable solutions that address disparities in healthcare access, quality, and outcomes, particularly for underserved populations. Leveraging their background in research and strategic media, she seeks to expand the reach of public health initiatives through innovation. Christina is excited to explore how healthcare innovation can drive impactful change both within Yale and on a global scale, ultimately promoting better health for all communities.
  • Program Coordinator

    Ellie Meise-Munns is the Senior Administrative Assistant for the Office of Public Health Practice at the Yale School of Public Health. Ellie has had multiple positions within Connecticut focusing on public health, including serving for a year as an AmeriCorps VISTA at Central Connecticut State University, where they focused on workforce development with the local residents of public housing. During their time as Community Impact Manager at United Way of Greater New Haven, they managed the Emergency Food and Shelter Program, a federal grant that expanded emergency food and shelter services for New Haven County. Additionally, they managed the Secure Start Network, which focused on engaging parents with young children on learning about attachment and how to recognize their child’s cues, and worked extensively on the diversity, equity, and inclusion work both internally and externally for the agency. Ellie holds a Master of Science in Geography focusing on Global Sustainability from Central Connecticut State University.

Affiliated Faculty

  • Senior Lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship

    Teresa Chahine is the inaugural Sheila and Ron ’92 B.A. Marcelo Lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship. She is the author of "Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship," a twelve-step framework for building impactful ventures in new and existing organizations. Dr. Chahine's research focuses on developing tools to characterize and advance social and environmental determinants of health. She launched the first social entrepreneurship program in the context of public health, at Harvard University. She was also responsible for launching the first venture philanthropy organization in her home country of Lebanon, providing tailored financing and critical management support to social enterprises serving marginalized populations through education and job creation for youth and women.
  • Senior Advisor, Career Management, Admissions and Curriculum

    Martin Klein, Ph.D., M.P.H. served as Senior Advisor to three deans at the Yale School of Public Health. He is currently the Senior Advisor, Career Management, Admissions and Curriculum. He led the creation of the Executive MPH, a hybrid degree program and served as its inaugural director, stepping down in July 2024. He was the Executive Director of the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, a program he co-founded. He also founded and directed InnovateHealth Yale, a program in social impact and entrepreneurship, the first program of its kind at a school of public health. Martin believes that using the tools of entrepreneurship and innovation can accelerate equity and access.
  • Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences); Director, Office of Public Health Practice; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Director, YSPH Global Health Concentration; Director, Maternal and Child Health Promotion (MCHP) Program

    Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, Ph.D., is Professor of Public Health, and Director of the Office of Public Health Practice, the Global Health Concentration, and the Maternal Child Health Promotion track at the Yale School of Public Health. He is the PI of the Yale-Griffin CDC Prevention Research Center (PRC). His global public health nutrition and food security research program, supported with over $70 million in extramural funds, has contributed to improvements in breastfeeding and other maternal, infant and young child nutrition outcomes, iron deficiency anemia among infants, household food security, and early childhood development. He has co-led innovative mixed-methods implementation studies assessing the impact of community health worker person centered interventions on breastfeeding, type-2 diabetes, post-partum hypertension and mental health outcomes among in vulnerable communities, including people of color in the U.S. He has published over 340 research articles, 3 books/monographs, and numerous journal supplements, book chapters, and technical reports. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (elected in 2019) and served in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Food and Nutrition Board from 2012-18. He has been a senior advisor to maternal-child community nutrition programs as well as household food security measurement projects funded by the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, UNICEF, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the U.S. Agency for International Development, The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH),The World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Governments across world regions. He obtained his BS in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and his MS in Food Science and his PhD in Nutrition from the University of California at Davis. His postdoctoral training at UC Davis focused on the link between nutrition and early childhood development.
  • Professor Emeritus of Public Health; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Research Associate, NBER

    Professor Jody Sindelar is a professor of public health, health economist, and public policy expert in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), as well as with Yale’s Department of Economics. In addition, she is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, and faculty fellow at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS). She is also a founding member and past president of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon).Professor Sindelar’s expertise is on the economics of substance abuse, including addictive substances of tobacco/vaping, alcohol, and illicit drugs. She has published on the impacts of substance abuse on productivity, educational attainment, gender differences, and other policy issues; and in various journals of economics, policy, addiction, health and medicine. Also, she has served on numerous editorial, review, and advisory boards and committees, and has presented her research at seminars and conferences both nationally and abroad. Professor Sindelar has given keynote addresses to conferences in the United States, Australia, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. She has also been a visiting professor at several universities and institutes, including Boston University in Boston, MA; the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, CA and Washington, DC; Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City, Mexico; and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Medical School in Shanghai, China. In addition, she has had sabbaticals at the Institut d'études Politiques de Paris (Paris Institute of Political Studies) in Paris, France; Stanford University in Stanford, CA; and the University of Pennsylvania.Professor Sindelar has been a principal investigator or collaborator on numerous research projects funded by various organizations, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ); Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); Connecticut Department of Social Services (DSS); Food and Drug Administration (FDA); National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA); National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); National Institute on Aging (NIA); National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA); Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF); Department of Veterans Affairs (VA); Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (YCCI); and the Federal Drug Administration.
  • Assistant Professor Adjunct of Epidemiology (Social and Behavioral Sciences)

    Yetsa A. Tuakli-Wosornu, MD, MPH is a board-certified physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) physician, also known as a physiatrist. A physiatrist focuses on treating problems with the muscles, joints and nerves without surgery. Dr. Tuakli-Wosornu specializes in interventional spine and sports medicine treatments, helping people achieve high physical and athletic performance at all stages of life through “holistic mind-body development” and therapies. She approaches her work with a sense of compassion and innovation. Physiatry allows “my experiences as a physician, athlete and public health advocate to dovetail,” she says.She is also a co-founder of BambooAbility, an initiative focused on mobility equipment. “For persons with disabilities in low-resource and tropical settings, barriers to mobility and physical activity are steep. Our initiative, BambooAbility, sees the development and design for manufacture of low-cost, durable, sustainable, purpose-built personal mobility equipment in order to support wheelchair users and others with mobility impairment in low-resource and tropical settings.”
  • Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health

    Dr. Sten Vermund is a pediatrician and infectious disease epidemiologist focused on diseases of low and middle income countries. His work on HIV-HPV interactions among women in Bronx methadone programs motivated a change in the 1993 CDC AIDS case surveillance definition and inspired cervical cancer screening programs launched within HIV/AIDS programs around the world. The thrust of his research has focused on health care access, adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, and prevention of  HIV transmission among general and key populations, including mother-to-child.  Dr. Vermund has become increasingly engaged in health policy, particularly around sustainability of HIV/AIDS programs and their expansion to non-communicable diseases, coronavirus pandemic response and prevention, and public health workforce development. His recent grants include capacity-building for public health in Chad, molecular epidemiology for HIV in Kazakhstan, and COVID-19 vaccine studies in Dominican Republic and Connecticut. He has worked with schools and arts organizations for COVID-19 risk mitigation and institutional safety.