Master of Science in Public Health -
Specialization in Global Emergency Preparedness and Response

• Overview
• Goals and Learning Objectives
• Specific Program Requirements
• PROGRAM FACULTY
• Current Class Schedule
• Admission Requirements and Application

Program Faculty

• Denny Amundson, DO
  Commissioned as ENS in 1972, Captain Dennis Amundson's naval career has encompassed a variety of assignments and duties as a Naval Physician. He completed his Internal Medicine Residency at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. Captain Amundson then spent 3 years on Okinawa as a General Internist followed by 2 years at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton. After deciding Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine was his calling, he transitioned to the U.S. Naval Medical Center in San Diego, California, first as a Training Fellow, then as staff in Pulmonary/ Critical Care Medicine. After 11 years of heading the Intensive Care Unit, he retired in 1996 and took a 2-year "sabbatical" with the San Diego Kaiser system. In 1999 he was asked to return to active duty as Program Director for Pulmonary/ Critical Care, and he has continued to function in this capacity to date. During his career, Captain Amundson has been deployed with the Seabees, the Marines, and with special operations forces in the Global War on terrorism. He has recently spent 6 months in Iraq as part of the Combined Land Force Coalition Command (CFLCC) under General Tommy Franks where he functioned in the Iraqi ministry of Health as coalition Task Force VII medical leader. Dr. Amundson is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda Md. and an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego. He holds numerous faculty positions on the staff at San Diego State University and the University of Nebraska. Dr. Amundson has been principal investigator in over 30 scientific studies, has authored over 80 medical publications and has been honored with a myriad of teaching awards.

• Stephanie Brodine, MD
  Stephanie Brodine is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases with extensive research, teaching, and field epidemiology experience. Her primary area of expertise is in HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections, with an emphasis on molecular epidemiology, behavioral epidemiology and interventions. Dr. Brodine is the Clinical Director for the Department of Defense (DoD) HIV/AIDS Prevention Program (DHAPP). This program is providing fiscal and technical support to over 30 countries worldwide, with predominance in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Brodine's primary appointment is with the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), at San Diego State University where she is a Professor and Division Head of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is also co-Director of the doctoral program in Epidemiology, which is joint with the UCSD School of Medicine. Through the GSPH, Dr Brodine has helped establish a bi-national academic community based program, with the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, School of Medicine, Tijuana Baja, and UCSD School of Medicine. VIIDAI, which she is co-director, conducts clinical and public health interventions in colonias and migrant camps in San Quentin, Baja. She is also Program Director for an NIH funded Native American Research Center for Health (CA NARCH), in partnership with the Indian Health Council.

• Kimberly Brouwer, PhD
  Kimberly C. Brouwer pursues research in the epidemiology and spatial epidemiology of infectious diseases. She was trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Hygiene and Public Health where she received her Ph.D. Prior to her appointment at UCSD, Dr. Brouwer worked for three years in the Division of Parasitic Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Past work has focused on HIV/malaria interactions in Kenya and factors relating to disease severity of schistosomiasis in Zimbabwe. Since joining the UCSD faculty in 2004, Dr. Brouwer has collaborated with Mexican researchers in studies of HIV/AIDS and injection drug use in cities along the Mexico/U.S. border, in an effort to inform appropriate public health interventions. She is currently principal investigator of a five-year grant to explore social and environmental factors affecting disease transmission and risk behaviors among injection drug users in Tijuana, Mexico. A component of this study involves building a geographic information system (GIS) to measure disease clustering and predict future occurrence of disease.

• Miguel Fraga, MD
  Miguel A. Fraga has studied the specialty of Family Medicine, Primary Health Care and graduated with honors in Teaching. He also has a Masters Degree in Sciences (Nutrition). He has been a professor in the School of Medicine of the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) since 1986 in the areas of Public Health, Medical Sociology, Health Promotion, Introduction to Clinical Medicine and Research Methodology. He is currently a full professor in this institution and is the coordinator of Community Activities and Public Health for the School of Medicine. He has had a private medical practice since 1986. Currently, he develops community and research activities with the SDSU Graduate School of Public Health where he has an appointment as associate professor since July 2000. He is also part of a binational team of investigators from UCSD-UABC in the area of HIV prevention in the U.S.-México´s border since 2000. He is the founder and General Coordinator for the VIIDAI Project, which has been active since 1998 and includes a variety of inter-institutional activities like integration between institutions, education and community service and research, with the joint participation of UABC-SDSU-UCSD, as well as the government of the State of Baja California and non-government organizations; the field of work of this project is the immigrant indigenous community, like San Quintín, Baja California.

• Louise Gresham, PhD, MPH
  Gresham is Senior Epidemiologist for the San Diego County, Health and Human Services Agency, Epidemiology Branch and Associate Research Professor with the SDSU, Graduate School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is also a cofounder and the Faculty Coordinator of the Masters of Science in Public Health, in Global Emergency Preparedness and Response. She has over 19 years of experience in the conduct and supervision of infectious disease surveillance, alert and response activities and is active in the development of health policies. Dr. Gresham is the Site Coordinator for the San Diego, U.S. Mexico Border Infectious Disease Surveillance Program. In addition, Dr. Gresham also served the CDC as a member of the expert panel on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Framework for Evaluation of Surveillance Systems. She is the Principle Investigator of the Native American Alliance on Emergency Preparedness (NAAEP) and focuses on biological related terrorism. She has taught internationally for the Middle East Consortium for Infectious Disease Surveillance and for the Jaffee Center in Tel Aviv. Dr. Gresham has published extensively in peer reviewed journals and, most recently, she authored contributing chapters in "Case Detection, Outbreak Detection and Outbreak Characterization" in the Handbook of Biosurveillance (Wagner MM, Elsevier Press, 2006), and a CSU Monograph: Service Learning (in press) with application to community emergency preparedness activities.

• Bryan Liang, PhD, JD, MD
  Bryan A. Liang is Executive Director and Professor of Law, Institute of Health Law Studies, California Western School of Law and Co-Director and Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, UCSD School of Medicine. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Public Health in the Global Preparedness and Emergency Response Program, College of Health and Human Services, SDSU, and Adjunct Professor of Aviation, College of Aviation, Western Michigan University. Dr. Liang's research and academic activities focus upon the interface of law, health care, and public policy. His work encompasses several hundred publications and presentations spanning from legal issues in promoting patient safety activities, the scope of permitted public health actions, minority access to care, to ethics and conflict of interest rules. He serves on local, regional, and national boards and committees relating to these areas, such as the American Medical Association Task Force on Health Literacy and Patient Safety, the San Diego Elder Abuse Council, the Elder Justice Coalition, the American Bar Association Advisor to the Draft Committee of the Uniform Emergency Volunteer Heath Services Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Minority Health, Healthy San Diego, the National Patient Safety Foundation, the Partnership for Safe Medicines, the Alliance Healthcare Foundation, the Pan Asian Lawyers of San Diego, and the Southwest Center for Asian Pacific American Law. Dr. Liang received his bachelor of science degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D. at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Studies, M.D. at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, and J.D. at Harvard Law School.

• Alfonso Rodriguez-Lainz, PhD, MPVM
  Alfonso Rodriguez-Lainz is the senior epidemiologist for the California Office of Binational Border Health, California Department of Health Services. Dr. Rodriguez-Lainz works to enhance collaboration between California and Mexican epidemiologists on public health issues in the border region. Dr. Rodriguez-Lainz has extensive experience in coordinating cross-border surveillance activities between California and Baja California, including the Border Infectious Disease Surveillance and Early Warning Infectious Disease Surveillance Programs. He also teaches three courses at SDSU: "Global and Border Surveillance", "International Field Epidemiology" and "Migration and Health".