​
I have learned so much from my amazing team and I look forward to all that they will continue to teach me. STSI is fortunate to partner and collaborate with these amazing women and men. There is not enough that can be said of what can be done as a team. There is no mine or me or I. It’s always we or us. We are a team. We stand together.
And together we will #bethechange
~ Mamta
Mamta Swaroop, MD, FACS
​
Director​
Dr. Swaroop is an Academic Global Trauma and Critical Care Surgeon and the recipient of the inaugural Mahler Global Mentorship Award from the InciSioN Network. She completed her General Surgery residency at the University of South Florida in 2009 and her Surgical Critical Care Fellowship at Northwestern in 2010.
Meet The Team
International Partners
Jorge Esteban Foianini,
MD, FACS
Dr. Foianini spent 10 years on active duty with the US Army in Heidelberg, Germany. While in Germany, he served 2 tours in Kosova and 1 humanitarian tour in Nigeria. In 2002, he returned to his home in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where he continues his involvement in trauma care while working in private practice as the Medical Director at Clinica Foianini. He works in a pro-bono advisory capacity with the mayor’s and governor’s offices regarding improvements in hospital care and disaster/trauma planning. In conjunction with the Association of Medical Doctors of Asia (AMDA)-Bolivia, he has helped expand course offerings of Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) and Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) throughout Bolivia. With NTSI, he has played an integral role in the pilot trauma registry program and hospital capacity assessment project in Santa Cruz as part of the Bolivian Trauma Initiative.
José Luis Gallardo Barrientos, MD, FACS
Dr. Gallardo studied medicine at the University of San Francisco Xavier in Sucre, Bolivia, before completing his residency in general surgery at Hospital de Clínicas in La Paz, Bolivia. He worked as a surgeon in Potosí, Bolivia, at the public hospital Daniel Bracamonte for several years before moving to the social security hospital Caja Nacional de Salud, where he serves as a general surgeon and is actively involved in residency training. He is a member of the Bolivian Surgical Society and currently serves as an Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) instructor for courses throughout Bolivia. With NTSI, he has been a key part of surgical and trauma capacity assessments in the department of Potosí, Bolivia, as part of the Bolivian Trauma Initiative.
Patty J. García
MD, MPH, PhD
Dr. Patty J. García, is a Professor at the School of Public Health at Cayetano Heredia University (UPCH) in Lima-Peru. She is the former Minister of Health of Peru, former Dean of the School of Public Health at UPCH, and former Chief of the Peruvian National Institute of Health (INS). She is recognized as a leader in Global Health. Has been member of the PAHO Foundation Technical Advisory Group (FTAG), board member of the Consortium of Universities in Global Health and President of the Latin American Association Against STDs (ALACITS). She is affiliate Professor of the Department of Global Health, at University of Washington and of the School of Public Health at Tulane University. She is actively involved in research and training in Global health, Reproductive health, STI/HIV, HPV and medical informatics. She has been recently appointed member of the United States National Academy of Medicine, becoming the first Peruvian professional with such a distinction.
Carlos Pilasi Menichetti,
MD, MSc
Chilean born with an Italian background, Carlos obtained his MD diploma and specialized in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Universidad de Chile earning his degree in 2005. He joined Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) after his graduation and continues his journey to date. His passion is surgical emergencies, which became even more obvious after his first mission with MSF. He returned to Chile to enroll in the general surgery program at Universidad de Chile and completed his training in 2011. He continued with MSF in Sydney and after 18 months as medical advisor, he completed a trauma surgery fellowship at Liverpool Hospital. He stayed in Australia as a Consultant Trauma Surgeon at St. George’s Hospital Trauma Centre in Sydney.
He has volunteered with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and at WHO field hospitals. Recently he was appointed the Trauma Surgical Advisor for MSF International.
Dr. Pilasi Menichetti is currently a Consultant in Emergency and Trauma Surgery at Kings College in London.
Ashish Bhalla,
MD, FACEE, FACP, FICCM
Dr. Bhalla is a Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), a tertiary care center located in Chandigarh, India. He is Consultant In-Charge for PGIMER’s emergency medicine outpatients and its geriatric unit. He supervises residents in internal medicine and emergency medicine, and teaches basic and advanced life support to paramedics and residents. His research interests lie within the field of emergency medicine, with a focus on toxicology and tropical infections. Dr. Bhalla has provided essential local support for NTSI’s Nanakpur (India) Health Initiative.
Sushma Sagar,
MBBS, MS, FACS
Dr. Sushma Sagar is a Professor in the Division of Trauma Surgery and Critical Care at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, India. She graduated from King George’s Medical College in 1992 and completed her surgical residency in 1996. She is a course director and faculty member for the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) India program and is on the core faculty for the National Institute of Disaster Management. As a founding executive member of the Indian Society for Trauma and Acute Care (ISTAC), she is involved with other teaching and training programs throughout the country and the region. She is the principal collaborator from India for NTSI’s South Asia Injury Prevention project.
Dr. Makasa has spent the past two and half years in his current diplomatic position and he is the immediate past technical coordinator of the African group of health Attaches. Prior to joining Permanent Mission of the Republic of Zambia to the UN, he worked in a multitude of capacities, ranging from Deputy Director for Emergency Health Services in the Zambian Ministry of Health to Board Member of Doctors Outreach Care International, Secretary General at the Zambia Medical Association and the Surgical Society of Zambia, to an applied research intern at NASA Dr. Makasa has a keen interest in global Health diplomacy, entrepreneurship, politics and governance and the arts. He received his MBChB from the University of Zambia, his MMed in orthopedics and trauma surgery from the University of Zambia, School of Medicine. He received his MPH-Global Health Epidemiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar. He is the mastermind in developing the Framework of the Global Action Plan for Surgery.
Emmanuel Makasa,
BScHB, MB, BCh, MMed, MPH, FCS
Uzma Rahim Khan,
MBBS, MSc
Dr. Khan is a senior instructor (research) in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan. She is a medical doctor and epidemiologist by training and is a PhD candidate at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. Her PhD thesis is on road traffic injuries in children. She has developed a course called “Injury Prevention and Control: Principles and Practice” for a master’s program in Pakistan, where there is a scarcity of injury courses.The course provides students with essential knowledge and skills to understand the challenges to prevent and control injuries given the local epidemiology, environment, economics, and policy. She is the Pakistan in-country director for NTSI’s South Asia Injury Prevention project.
National Partners
LeVon Stone Sr.,
MA
LeVon Stone Sr. is the program director for Cure Violence/CeaseFire Illinois. He began volunteering with CeaseFire in 2004, as a key liaison between violence interrupters and the community.
In 2006, he was hired to work as a violence interrupter in the Roseland community. His current role as program cirector for CeaseFire Illinois requires oversight of all program operations for the organization in Chicago and throughout the state of Illinois, including management of community, hospital and school program activities. He received his bachelor’s degree in Inner City Studies with a Public Health concentration in May 2013 and completed his master’s degree in the same discipline in May 2015. He is frequently invited to speak at events, to the media, and academic conferences. At NTSI, Mr. Stone is the community director for the Chicago South Side Trauma First Responders Course project.
Franklin Cosey-Gay,
MPH
FranklinFranklin Cosey-Gay is the project director for the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention (CCYVP), one of the six Academic Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention. He has primarily examined prevention efforts through a social ecological model that seeks to identify risk and protective factors at the individual, relational, community, and societal levels. His experience working with families in low-income community settings has led to him teach qualitative methods and qualitative data analysis with the Chicago Department of Public Health, Lurie Children’s Hospital, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. His experience moderating focus groups and semi-structured interviews on topics such as partner and community violence, drug abuse, sexual and reproductive health, childhood obesity, sports concussions, and immunizations has given him acumen in collecting data on sensitive topics. He is the qualitative data analyst ad public heath consultant for NTSI’s Chicago South Side Trauma First Responders Course project.
Q. Eileen Wafford, MSt, MLIS, is a research librarian at Galter Health Sciences Library, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Originally from Chicago, Eileen earned her bachelor's degree in history with a concentration in education from Western Illinois University. Eileen attended the University of Oxford where she earned a Master of Studies in Historical Research. Eileen completed her Master of Library and Information Studies from McGill University. Eileen has worked in many settings, including home health care, corporations, and libraries of all types. Eileen currently supports the clinical, scholarly, and research needs at Feinberg School of Medicine through providing literature search assistance, resource training, and systematic review support. Eileen interests range from in community engagement to developing or tuning search methodologies to improve the research process.
Q. Eileen Wafford,
MSt, MLIS
ANITA WADHWA, EdD
A native Houstonian, Anita Wadhwa is a classroom teacher and restorative justice coordinator at YES Prep Northbrook High School, and author of Restorative Justice in Urban Schools: Disrupting the School to Prison Pipeline and a contributor to the recently released anthology,Colorizing Restorative Justice.
She is The Co-Founder of Restorative Empowerment (or REY) and hires former students to train organizations in Houston in restorative practices. She owes everything to her parents, husband, and two lovely girls.
UDORO EKPIN-GATEWOOD, MEd
“I am forever a student.”
In addition to being a wife and mother of three intelligent and beautiful children, Udoro obtained a Masters degree in Counselor Education from the University of St. Thomas - Houston. Formally, she taught high school English Literature for nine years. Along with Dr. Anita Wadhwa, she is the co-founder of the Restorative Collaborative of Houston and Restorative Empowerment for Youth (REY). With REY, they have conducted workshops and consulted with various groups and schools throughout the country.
She believes Restorative Justice sits at the crossroads of her two passions, social justice and social emotional health and learning.
Sumanas Jordan,
MD, PhD
Dr. Sumanas (Sue) Jordan is an Assistant Professor of Plastic Surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She received her MD/PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2010. Dr. Jordan completed the integrated plastic surgery residency program at Northwestern University and the reconstructive microsurgery fellowship at The Ohio State University. Her clinical focus includes targeted muscle reinnervation for amputees, microsurgery for lymphedema, and gender affirmation surgery. Dr. Jordan’s research interests include functional biomaterials for muscle and nerve regeneration, pain outcomes following major limb amputation, and increasing access to complex reconstructive surgery.
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Jade Nunez,
MD, FACS
Dr. Nunez is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and faculty for the Center for Global Surgery at the University of Utah. He leads ongoing projects in Mongolia, which include establishing an ATLS program, expanding rural laparoscopic courses, building research capacity and assisting with national surgical planning. He completed his residency in General Surgery and fellowships in Surgical Critical Care and Acute Care Surgery at Wake Forest.
Juan Carlos Puyana,
MD, FRCSC, FACS, FACCP
Dr. Puyana is the Director for Global Health-Surgery at Pitt. He has been the PI of several training grants, and successfully and uninterruptedly funded by the NIH since 2006, through several global health funding mechanisms. Dr. Puyana is a Trauma and Acute Care Surgeon and a Global Health Educator, specifically in the areas of trauma, injury, and medical informatics in trauma and emergency surgery. He is an expert in developing international capacity-building programs in the fields of trauma, trauma registries, and trauma datasets in global surgery. He has established reciprocal mentoring collaborations in clinical areas and research educational endeavors with several universities and trauma centers in Latin America and Kenya.
Dr. Puyana was the president of the Pan-American Trauma Society from 2011 to 2012, and through the organization, he created and sustained academic exchanges among countries in Latin America. He designed several trauma-training courses and developed a handbook and course on ultrasound applications for emergency care and trauma management, as well as a course on disaster response.
In 2017, Dr. Puyana was appointed to the Global Health Committee of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and in such capacity, co-authored the publication Global Health and the Future Role of the United States, the most recent NAS report on Global Health. He is a member of the Definitive Surgical Trauma Care (DSTC™) teaching faculty in Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Singapore, and Greece.
Adesina Adedeji is a 4th year medical student at Windsor University School of Medicine in St. Kitts. His experiences growing up in Nigeria and living in St. Kitts helped shape his interest in global health issues and helping underserved communities. He plans a career in trauma/critical care. Outside school, he loves hiking, cooking, and watching soccer and tennis. He is a member of the NTSI Global Surgery & Anesthesia Simulation team.
Adesina Adedeji, MBBS
Research Associates
Danielle Wishart is a medical student at USC and recently completed a T37 Fellowship at the Center for Health Equity Transformation at Northwestern University. She studied political science with a focus on international development and history with a full scholastic sports scholarship in gymnastics from Bowling Green State University. She is a professional, Elite gymnast in Canada, who competed in Division I athletics and won several silver medal in the Mid-American Conference Championships in Gymnastics. As a member of the NTSI, she is conducting qualitative research for the TRUE Communities course participants and coordinating a national evaluation of skill retention and acquisition.
Danielle Wishart
Hannah Enyart is from the suburbs of Chicago. She studied Psychology, Spanish, and Pre-Health in undergrad at the University of Notre Dame and served for a year as an Americorps member working in Chicago Public Schools. She is currently enrolled in an MD program at the Feinberg School of Medicine. Her passions include service, health equity, and global health, with a strong interest in trauma. Outside of school, she enjoy new dining experiences, television shows, and lounging with her cat, Theodore.
Hannah Enyart
Varshini Cherukupalli is in Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine class of 2018. She co-founded the Northwestern chapter of Project RISHI as an undergraduate. She works on initiatives to improve availability of health care in LMICs including the implementation of a first responder course. She is in general surgery training in Los Angelas.
Varshini Cherukupalli, MD
Morgan Jackson is a current medical student at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in the class of 2022. She graduated from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2018, where she studied Genetics, Cell Biology & Development and learned about global health disparities through travels to Peru, Guatemala, and India. As a medical student she has worked with STSI’s Bolivian Trauma Initiative, teaching a trauma first responders course in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and she continues to work with the Chicago South Side Trauma First Responders Course project.
Morgan Jackson
Carly Loveland is in the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Class of 2020. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a BS in biomedical engineering. At Hopkins, she was involved with an Engineers Without Borders project in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, that installed water-powered pumps for sustainable year-round irrigation in rural gardening communities. She continues her commitment to global health initiatives as a member of the Cambodian Project.
Carly Loveland, MD
Daniel Sasson is a graduate of Emory University and a medical student at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. He founded Emory’s Operation Smile Chapter and went on to host the first “Safe Plastic Surgery Summit” in the United States, featuring speakers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is a co-author of the book, My Doctor Said What?, which aims to bolster the community’s understanding of disease and demystify medical terminology and symptomatology, empowering and enabling an individual to take command of their health.
Daniel Sasson
Jonathan Vacek, MD
Ben Gastevich
Ben Gastevich grew up in Chicago and is a member of the Feinberg School of Medicine Class of 2023. He graduated from Brown University in 2016 with a BA in Biology, and spent the following year studying international relations and politics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center at Nanjing University in Nanjing, China. He is studying the attitudes of program directors at general surgery residency programs towards increasing bidirectional exchanges of trainees, and the benefits international rotations can have for general surgery trainees.
Manisha Bhatia is a general surgery resident at Indiana University and the current Global Surgery Fellow. She co founded the Northwestern Chapter of Project RISHI as an undergraduate. Her passion for global surgery developed from her research trips to our partner community in Rural India. She continues to focus her research on increasing access to equitable surgical care in low and middle income countries.
Manisha Bhatia, MD
Ahmadreza Abbaslou
Ahmadreza Abbaslou
The team continues
to grow...
John Sincavage is in the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Class of 2020. He graduated from the University of North Carolina as a Morehead-Cain Scholar. During college he interned for the Handa Trauma Hospital in Cambodia re-developing their biohazard waste system and training staff in p​rotocols for resource-limited surgical settings. ​At Feinberg, he is a project lead for the pro-bono medical student consultant group Second Opinions. He continues his commitment to global health initiatives as a member of the Cambodian Project.
