June 16, 2021
Global WACh welcomes new Implementation Science faculty hires
We are thrilled to officially announce our new faculty in Implementation Science! These outstanding candidates from our faculty search in Fall 2020 bring valuable skills, research and training experience, and talents to positively contribute to advance our Center’s mission to make scientific discoveries, cultivate leaders, and bridge disciplines to advance the tightly connected health and well-being of women, adolescents, and children. They will lead and grow the footprint of implementation science within our Center and we are eager to collaborate with them on current and future research and training endeavors.
Dr. Arianna Means, PhD – Assistant Professor
Dr. Means was previously an Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health. She received her Master’s degree in epidemiology and her PhD in global health implementation science from the University of Washington. Her research interests include using implementation science methods to effectively deliver evidence-based interventions to improve child health and survival, with a focus on soil-transmitted helminths and other neglected tropical diseases. She is the principal investigator of six studies, with collaborators based in Benin, India, Malawi, and Kenya. She collaborates closely with Ministries of Health, the WHO, and other partners to develop tools that can be used in routine public health programs. She also serves as an implementation science methodologist with collaborators throughout the Schools of Public Health and Medicine. Dr. Means is passionate about teaching and mentoring. She is the instructor for the eDGH Fundamentals of Implementation Science course, co-director of the UW Implementation Science Summer Intensive course, and co-instructs the School of Public Health’s Qualitative and Mixed Methods course (PHI513).
Dr. Ferdinand Mukumbang, PhD – Acting Assistant Professor
Dr. Mukumbang is a Public Health Scientist specializing in health policy and systems research with a focus on implementation sciences. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Nursing Sciences, a Master’s degree in Nursing Education, and another Master’s in Philosophy in the Management of HIV. He obtained his Ph.D. in Public Health in 2018 from the School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. The recent grants he has worked on include household-focused HIV interventions that can address various aspects of household HIV competency supported by the Belgian Development Cooperation, through VLIR-UOS (Grant ZA2018TEA474A102). He also worked on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acquired grant (NU2GGH002193-01-00) through the South African Medical Research Council on evaluating models designed to enhance retention in HIV care and adherence of pre-exposure HIV prophylaxis among adolescent girls in South Africa. Dr. Mukumbang has experience in teaching Public Health-related courses at the Honors and Master’s level and supervising Masters and Ph.D. thesis. He is particularly interested in the development and adoption of Critical Realist research methods for evidence-based theorizing in health care and global health. He has published about 40 articles in international peer-review journals.
Dr. Anjuli Wagner, PhD – Assistant Professor
Dr. Wagner was previously an Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health and has been working in Kenya for 11 years. She received her Masters and PhD in epidemiology from University of Washington. Her research interests include pediatric HIV, implementation science, and systems engineering. Dr. Wagner has been involved in a series of studies across the HIV cascade for women, adolescents, and children that range from incentive trials to pediatric HIV diagnostic testing to adolescent HIV testing to PrEP in pregnancy. She is passionate about working in collaboration with ministries of health to identify health system research priorities and address relevant questions with implementation science. She has been the principal investigator on 4 studies, including 2 ongoing studies serving pregnant people and adolescents in Kenya, and has served as a collaborator and mentor on projects in Kenya, Mozambique, DRC, and the U.S. She teaches the undergraduate implementation science course and directs the Global WACh Certificate Program.