Rachel Hall-Clifford, PhD, MPH, MSc.
Rachel Hall-Clifford is Assistant Professor in the Center for the Study of Human Health and the Department of Sociology at Emory University. She is a medical anthropologist who applies social science approaches to global health research and implementation. Rachel has conducted fieldwork in the central highlands of Guatemala on the delivery of health services for 15 years. Her research areas include accessible healthcare for marginalized populations, health systems strengthening in post-genocide contexts and global health fieldwork ethics. She has held medical anthropology research positions at Oxford University, Harvard University, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Rachel is Director of the NAPA-OT Field School in Guatemala. She is Co-Founder of safe+natal and the Emory Co-Design Lab for Health Equity.
Gari Clifford is a tenured Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics (BMI) at Emory. His research applies signal processing and machine learning to medicine to classify, track and predict health and illness. His focus research areas include critical care, digital psychiatry, global health, mHealth, neuroinformatics and perinatal health. After training in Theoretical Physics, he transitioned to AI and engineering for his doctorate at the University of Oxford in the 1990s. He subsequently joined MIT as a postdoctoral fellow, then Principal Research Scientist where he managed the creation of the MIMIC II database, the largest open-access critical care database in the world. He later returned to Oxford as an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, where he helped found its Sleep & Circadian Neuroscience Institute and served as Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Healthcare Innovation at the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Gari is a strong supporter of commercial translation, working closely with industry as an advisor to multiple companies, co-founding and serving as CTO of an MIT spin-out ‘MindChild Medical’ since 2009, and co-founding and serving as CSO for Lifebell AI in 2000. As Chair of BMI, Gari has established the department as a leading center for critical care and mHealth informatics, and as a champion for open-access data and open-source software in medicine, particularly through his leadership of the PhysioNet/CinC Challenges and contributions to the PhysioNet Resource. He is committed to developing sustainable solutions to healthcare problems in resource poor locations, with much of his work focused in Guatemala. He is Co-Founder of safe+natal and the Emory Co-Design Lab for Health Equity.
During the summit, Rachel and Gari will lead attendees in an applied global health session, focusing on co-design, which is the linchpin to program sustainability in a global setting, and landscape analysis – needs assessments/asset analysis within communities.
