Program Leadership

Alain Chichom-Mefire, MD - University of Buea

Dr. Chichom is a Professor of General Surgery and the Vice-Dean in charge of Research and Cooperation at the Faculty of Health Sciences at University of Buea. He was the Head of the Department of Surgery in the same faculty for over a decade. He also serves as the Director of Research for Cameroon at PASE-UCLA. He has designed and implemented a curriculum for undergraduate training in general surgery for the University and teaches a module on non-communicable diseases to MPH and PhD students in the Buea’s Department of Public Health and Hygiene. He has mentored over 90 medical students, 20 MPH students and three PhD students in their research. Dr. Chichom’s research work has been oriented towards improving the care of the injured in Cameroon. He developed a collaborative program with research partners in UCSF and UCLA, with whom he designed two programs, earning funding from the NIH. He co-mentored numerous trainees from UCSF and UCLA, serving as their Cameroon mentor and direct supervisor for their in-country fieldwork.

Catherine Juillard, MD, MPH - Program for the Advancement of Surgical Equity (PASE)-UCLA

Dr. Juillard is a trauma surgeon and founding co-Director of PASE-UCLA, which aims to improve access for quality surgical care in LMICs. She has over 13 years of experience leading research studies in Cameroon and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which focus on improving access for quality trauma care, including serving as MPI with Dr. Chichom for NIH-funded projects on mHealth and trauma QI. She and Dr. Chichom have had a research partnership in Cameroon since 2008, with a successful track record of collaborative project execution, trainee mentoring (both US and SSA), funding, and publication. Dr. Juillard has mentored over 40 trainees, of which 15 are LMIC trainees who have had successful publications, including first-author publications, in peer-reviewed journals under Dr. Juillard’s mentorship.

Sandra McCoy, PhD - Program for the Advancement of Surgical Equity (PASE)-UCLA, UC Berkeley

Dr. McCoy is core faculty at PASE-UCLA, an Associate Professor of Epidemiology, and Program Lead and Curriculum Coordinator of the UC Berkeley Epidemiology and Biostatistics Online MPH program (OOMPH). For a decade, Dr. McCoy has provided mentorship to trainees at the undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and junior faculty levels, including postdoctoral fellows in SSA through the NIH Fogarty Global Health Equity Scholars Program. Dr. McCoy has a portfolio of successful ongoing and completed NIH- funded research projects and leads an independent research program of quantitative and qualitative research with collaborators in eastern and southern Africa focusing on impact evaluation, implementation science, and intervention design and evaluation. Guided by implementation science frameworks, the overarching goal of her team’s research is to develop effective, cost-effective and scalable interventions for intractable global health challenges, leveraging digital health (mHealth) tools and data science.

Nicholas Tendongfor, PhD - University of Buea

Dr. Tendongfor is an Associate Professor of Medical Microbiology and Head of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene at the University of Buea. He has expertise in community directed interventions, health programs evaluation, and experimental design and data analysis. Dr. Tendongfor has served as principal and co-principal investigator in many WHO, European Union and European Foundation Initiative for Neglected Tropical Diseases (EFINT)-sponsored projects implemented in Cameroon and other SSA countries. He has supervised 49 theses in the fields of public health, epidemiology, medical microbiology, and medicine at the MPH, PhD, and Medical Doctor levels. He has authored over 39 publications in peer reviewed journals.

Georges Nguefack-Tsague, PhD - University of Buea

Dr. Nguefack-Tsague currently teaches coursework in Biostatistics, Data Science and Health Informatics. His research addresses topics in data analysis, programmatic mapping and size estimation of populations most at risk of HIV, HIV modelling, and health information systems, health research secondary data analysis, in particular demographic and health survey (DHS) data. His expertise in secondary data analysis has led him to be the coordinator of Working Group “Data Mining and Big Data Analytics” and the Work Set “Secondary Data Analysis of Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) in Africa” of the Pan African Health Informatics Association (HELINA). He is author of more than 75 publications in peer reviewed journals, and a book. Dr. Nguefack-Tsague has directly mentored 64 students, 5 junior faculties, and 15 residents in disseminated in SSA.

Alan Hubbard, PhD - PASE-UCLA, UC Berkeley

Dr. Hubbard is a Professor of Biostatistics, Co-Director of the Biomedical Big Data pre-doctoral (T32) training program, co-Director of the Center of Targeted Learning, Director of the computational biology Core E of the SuperFund Center at University of California, Berkeley (NIH/EPA), and is a consulting statistician on multiple federally funded and foundation projects. He has worked on a diverse range of projects, but most of his work has focused on semi-parametric estimation in high- dimensional data. His current methods-research focuses on precision medicine, variable importance, statistical inference for data-adaptive parameters, and statistical software implementing targeted machine learning methods, including a significant body of work applying machine learning in the study of acute trauma.

Rasheedat Oke, MBBS, MPH - Program Coordinator at PASE-UCLA

Dr. Oke is a physician with specialty training in public health and a Program Manager at PASE-UCLA. She has over a decade of public health experience collaborating in various academic, clinical, and programmatic settings. She is also experienced working with underserved and vulnerable populations in LMICs. She is intimately involved in PASE-UCLA trainee mentorship where she works with both US-based and partner country trainees in Cameroon and Uganda to identify goals, map out clear plans to achieve them, develop study designs and supervises trainee research to ensure objectives are met. Dr. Oke, in collaboration with the Cameroon Program Coordinator will provide ongoing support to STREaM trainees regarding program objectives, timelines, required coursework, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), budgets, logistics, and coordination of activities.

Nahyeni Bassah, PhD - Program Coordinator at University of Buea

Dr. Bassah is a trained nurse by profession and a nurse educator by specialization. She holds a PhD in Nursing and has a wealth of experience in training program development, implementation, and evaluation. She has over 11 years of experience as a nurse educator and serves as a curriculum consultant for most nursing schools in Cameroon. Dr. Bassah is also a member of the Buea mentoring team for nursing and midwifery schools in Cameroon. Dr. Bassah has supervised over 20 Master’s theses in nursing education, medico-surgical nursing, and public health.