The Department of Global Health is thrilled to welcome two new Assistant Teaching Professors to join its team of dedicated faculty this fall 2023. Their worldly and cross-cultural experiences, dedication to the field of global health and equity, and commitment to teaching and enriching the student experience will be welcomed assets to our department. Both of our new professors will provide innovative and effective instruction for undergraduate and graduate students in foundational global health and public health courses, with emphasis on active engagement, innovative pedagogy and inclusion in the classroom.
“I’m excited to welcome Kata and David as new faculty members to our department,” shared DGH Interim Chair Dr. Carey Farquhar. “The expertise and passion they have for teaching global and public health will be a huge asset for the DGH community and we are so fortunate they’re joining us!”
Welcome, Dr. Katarina Mucha and Dr. David Mukasa. Learn more about them and welcome them to our DGH community this academic year.
KATARINA MUCHA
Dr. Mucha obtained a BS in Biological Anthropology and Anatomy from Duke University, followed by a PhD in Biological Anthropology and an MPH in Family and Community Health from Harvard University. She completed an NCI-funded postdoctoral fellowship training in Cancer Prevention and Control at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, where she then worked as an Instructor in the Department of Oncological Sciences on community-based research projects tackling health disparities in underrepresented populations. Dr. Mucha has more recently utilized this multidisciplinary training and research background to teach, mentor, and advise public health undergraduate and graduate students.
Dr. Mucha’s scholarship focuses on the study of health disparities to develop and create culturally appropriate interventions and programs for immigrant, minority, and traditionally underrepresented communities. She has extensive training in mixed methods design, including ethnographic and qualitative research. Her work is guided by a community-based participatory research approach designed to re-shape and advance the field of global health to achieve social equity and ethical engagement in socially disadvantaged populations. Dr. Mucha’s background research experiences directly inform the pedagogical approach of her courses, with diversity, cross-cultural competence, understanding and access at the core of their vision, content and methods.
She will be teaching courses in the MPH Core co-teaching PHI 511 Foundations of Global Health in fall quarter, the undergraduate program PHGH co-teaching SPH 491/492 Public Health Capstone as well as global health electives, co-teaching GH 305 Global Health Justice and GH 517 International Bioethics, Social Justice and Health seminar.
DAVID MUKASA
Dr. Mukasa received his Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine and Master of Veterinary Preventive Medicine (Field Epidemiology) from Makerere University (2011 and 2015), and a Ph.D. in Public Health (Epidemiology and Genetics) from Seoul National University (2020), and a Masters in Genomic Medicine from Imperial College London (2022). He most recently was a researcher at the International Vaccine Institute in the Epidemiology, Public Health, Impact and Clinical Development Unit, under the Department of Biostatistics. Dr. Mukasa has conducted research involving undertaking large-scale analyses based on data from nationwide population- based prospective cohorts and has worked on the derivation of prediction equations to estimate future risk of complex diseases. Dr. Mukasa has also collaborated on infectious disease research involving conducting randomized clinical trials, observational studies, vaccine effectiveness studies, disease surveillance, cost of illness and cost-effectiveness analysis studies, studies of infection transmission dynamics, and community household surveys in low- and middle-income countries, such as research programs in Madagascar, Nepal, Malawi, Ghana, Fiji, Mozambique, India, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia. Dr. Mukasa has a passion for teaching and was an Assistant Instructor of Epidemiology at Seoul National University Graduate School of Public Health, where he taught the Principles of Epidemiology and Laboratory course to graduate students.
We anticipate that Dr. Mukasa will begin teaching various courses beginning in winter quarter 2024.