AMPATH Welcomes New Team Leaders and Fellow

The coronavirus pandemic currently prevents AMPATH’s North American faculty from travelling to Kenya, so new team leaders Dan Guiles, MD, MPHTM, and Brianne Lewis, MD, FRCSC, serve their local communities while eagerly anticipating the day they can commence in person collaboration with their colleagues at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) and Moi University School of Medicine.

Guiles, an Indiana University-trained physician specializing in medicine-pediatrics, assumes the pediatrics team leader role, while Lewis, a University of Toronto fellow in Global Women’s Health and Equity, becomes the reproductive health team leader. AMPATH’s unique partnership model drew both to their new roles.

Reproductive Health Team Leader Brianne Lewis

Brianne Lewis, MD, FRCSC

Lewis was attracted to the team leader role “because AMPATH is an unparalleled model of excellence and sustainability in global health care. I have long had an interest in global health work, but sought to participate in an ethical and sustainable manner. The local partnership and integration of the AMPATH model is something I am proud to support in my role as team leader.”

Lewis currently works in an academic hospital in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and with the indigenous Moose Cree community in Moose Factory, Ontario. When travel resumes, Lewis looks forward to working on projects in Eldoret related to the management of high blood pressure during pregnancy and the care of families experiencing infant loss. “Teaching is one of the aspects of my job that I find most rewarding, and I am looking forward to working with learners from Kenya and North America,” she continued.

Lewis holds a postgraduate diploma in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in addition to her doctor of medicine from Memorial University of Newfoundland. She completed her residency in family medicine and fellowship in obstetrics and gynecology at Queen’s University in Canada. The reproductive health team leader position is the second year of her fellowship in Global Women’s Health and Equity at the University of Toronto.

“Global health is particularly interesting to me because of the holistic approach to care. Too often, medicine approaches illness and disease at face value without considering the systems and structural issues that contribute to the development of ill health. Global health takes a more inclusive approach, looking beyond individuals, and even beyond borders, to imagine better health for all,” said Lewis.

“Reproductive health is an area that is particularly vulnerable to influences of the global political, cultural, and environmental climate, and maternal and neonatal mortality are often used as surrogate markers of development. As an obstetrician/gynecologist, I recognize the importance of healthy families to communities worldwide, and endeavor to work on a local level to support families to have the healthy pregnancies and births they desire, while simultaneously working to improve the global context so all families can thrive,” Lewis continued.

Pediatric Team Leader Dan Guiles

Dan Guiles, MD, MPHTM

”AMPATH’s collaborative approach that seeks to build and continually refine truly bidirectional global health partnerships with patient care at the center of all its activities made a huge impression on me and shaped my worldview of appropriate and effective global health practice,” said Guiles who completed the global health residency track and a two-month rotation in Eldoret during his med-peds residency at IU School of Medicine.  “It has been a dream of mine to work for AMPATH, and I am excited about the team leader role as it combines all three aspects of the tripartite academic mission: patient care, training, and research,” he continued.

In addition to developing a passion for global health partnerships during his residency rotation, Guiles also met his wife, Stephany. She was an IU neonatology fellow at the time and was piloting a neonatal nurse training program at the Riley Mother and Baby Hospital in Eldoret.

Guiles currently works with IU’s COVID-19 contact tracing efforts, develops global health educational curricula for medical students and residents, and will practice primary care internal medicine and pediatrics at Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis. He also looks forward to educational activities in Eldoret with both U.S. and Kenyan medical trainees as well as working with the population health programs to continue to develop his public health knowledge and skills.  Guiles earned his masters’ in public health and tropical medicine degree at Tulane University and spent two years working in Mbarara, Uganda with Massachusetts General Hospital’s global medicine program.  He most recently served as the co-director for both Vanderbilt University’s Integrated Science Course in global health and the internal medicine residency’s global health pathway.    

Guiles added, “I love the collaborative aspect of global health.  It allows for unparalleled opportunities to work with talented individuals from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, and life experiences.  Using our combined knowledge and experience to assess needs, develop interventions and evaluate their effectiveness is both challenging and incredibly rewarding.  I also really enjoy working with students and medical residents who are interested in engaging with global health to some capacity in their future careers.  Whether it’s through one-on-one mentorship, classroom discussion, or through clinical/research related work, it’s great to help medical trainees wrestle through what it means to engage appropriately with global partners.”

Research Fellow Alexa Monroy

Alexa Monroy, MD

In addition to new team leaders, the AMPATH partnership also welcomes Alexa Monroy, MD, as the post-doctoral research fellow for the East Africa International epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA-EA). Working with Kara Wools-Kaloustian, MD, MPH, Monroy will manage non-communicable disease cohorts and assist the IeDEA-EA team with onsite project initiation and management needs.

Monroy said she was drawn to “the opportunity to learn about the Kenyan healthcare system, refine my project management skills, and work with mentors who are dedicated to excellence in research.” She strives to deepen her knowledge of global health research, in particular the logistics of designing and implementing prospective trials.

Monroy was born in Guatemala City and studied neuroscience and global health at Duke University. She completed a Global Health Corps Fellowship at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C., medical school at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and pediatrics residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Between her second and third years of medical school, she completed a Global Health Delivery Intensive program at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she studied AMPATH as a model organization for global health care expansion. “I was able to visit the AMPATH site in Eldoret earlier this year, and am so excited to join the AMPATH team,” said Monroy who resides in Kenya with her husband.

Kelly and Hunter-Squires Continue as Team Leaders

Surgery team leader JoAnna Hunter-Squires, MD, and medicine team leader Caitrin Kelly, MD, continue in their roles for a second year. Faculty members from IU School of Medicine and other AMPATH consortium members have served as full-time team leaders in Kenya since the advent of the Kenyan partnership in 1990. When in Kenya, team leaders serve as faculty for their respective departments at Moi University. They live at IU House and provide orientation, information and serve as a resource for visiting learners, fellow faculty members and AMPATH guests.