Senior Scholars

Dave A. Chokshi
Senior Scholar

Dave A. Chokshi, MD, MSc, FACP was the 43rd Commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, one of the leading health agencies in the world. He led the City’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including its historic campaign to vaccinate over 6 million New Yorkers, saving tens of thousands of lives. Dr. Chokshi architected treatment strategies, navigated school and economic reopenings, and served as principal public spokesperson. Under his tenure, the Health Department’s budget grew to its highest-ever level, reflecting investment in signature initiatives such as the Public Health Corps, Pandemic Response Institute, and New Family Home Visiting program. In 2021, the Department also stewarded the launch of the nation’s first publicly-authorized overdose prevention centers—as well as a landmark Board of Health resolution on racism as a public health crisis.

From 2014-2020, Dr. Chokshi served in leadership roles at NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H), including as its inaugural Chief Population Health Officer, where he built an award-winning team dedicated to transforming the largest public health care system in the country. He was also Chief Executive Officer of the H+H Accountable Care Organization (ACO), one of the few ACOs in the nation to achieve highquality and cost performance for eight consecutive years. He has been a practicing primary care internist at Bellevue Hospital since 2014 and is also Clinical Professor of Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Previously, Dr. Chokshi served as a White House Fellow at the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, where he was the principal health advisor in the Office of the Secretary. His prior work experience spans the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Dr. Chokshi has written on medicine and public health in The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet, Health Affairs, Science, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American. In 2016, President Obama appointed him to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health.

He trained in internal medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, where he received the Dunne Award for Compassionate Care, and was a clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School. During his training, he did clinical work in Guatemala, Peru, Botswana, Ghana, and India. He received his M.D. with Alpha Omega Alpha distinction from Penn. He also earned an MSc in global public health as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and graduated summa cum laude from Duke.

Lyndon Haviland
Distinguished Scholar

Lyndon Haviland, MPH, DrPH, a distinguished scholar at CUNY SPH, is an international health consultant with more than 30 years public health experience. Dr. Haviland began her career in the US Refugee Service, working in multiple camps with South East Asia refugees. In 1991, she co-authored the first humanitarian needs assessment of Cambodia for the US Agency for International Development. Since that time, Dr. Haviland has led various public health campaigns, initiatives and organizations. Her consulting clients include UN agencies, international NGOs, and former Heads of State. She has served as a Board member for numerous international and domestic NGOs including the American Public Health Association where she is the recipient of two of its highest honors, Friend of the Student Assembly and the Director’s Citation.

As a consultant, Dr. Haviland has advised global leaders, presidents and agency heads on maternal and child health, access to vaccines, vaccine hesitancy, sexual and reproductive health, tobacco control and health promotion / disease prevention. Her work spans strategy, communications, leadership and partnership development. She was the Senior Project Leader for the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health Every Woman, Every Child) , an initiative helped to align all member states of the United Nations around a common strategy for saving more than 16 million lives and raised more than $40 billion in new resources for women and children’s health globally. Every Woman, Every Child is widely acknowledged as a turning point for multi-sectoral partnerships at the United Nations.

Dr. Haviland has worked in a broad range of professional environments spanning domestic, academic, multinational and multilateral organizations including the Earth Echo International, GAVI, UN Women, Policy Wisdom, Rabin Martin, the Aspen Institute, UNAIDS, the United Nations Department of Public Information, the UN Foundation, HRSA/SPNS projects, UNDP, WHO, the International Medical Corps, the American Legacy Foundation, The International Catholic Migration Commission and the International Organization for Migration. She holds a masters and doctorate degrees in public health from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and has completed Advanced Management & Leadership training at the Harvard Business School.

Woodie Kessel
Senior Scholar

Dr. Woodie Kessel, B.S.E.E., M.D., M.P.H., is a pediatrician and child advocate. He has had a long career as an educator, investigator, and practitioner in medicine, public health, bioengineering, community-based programming, and public policy. His research focuses on improving the health of children and families, currently with a special focus on preventing gun violence and food insecurity.

Dr. Kessel is currently the CEK Senior Child Health Scholar in Residence at the C. Everett Koop Institute, Dartmouth College and Medical School; Professor of Pediatrics, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College; and Professor of the Practice at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health. He was most recently inducted into the Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society.

Previously, Dr. Kessel served in the U.S. Public Health Service as an Assistant Surgeon General and senior advisor on child and family health matters to the White House, Cabinet Secretaries, Surgeons General, and Health and Human Services officials spanning eight administrations. Dr. Kessel has delivered nearly 500 invited lectures and scientific/policy presentations and authored almost 60 articles, chapters and reports.

Heidi Larson
Senior Scholar

Heidi J. Larson, PhD, is Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and is the Founding Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is also Clinical Professor of Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and Guest Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Professor Larson previously headed Global Immunisation Communication at UNICEF, chaired GAVI’s Advocacy Task Force, and served on the WHO SAGE Working Group on vaccine hesitancy. The VCP was named a WHO Centre of Excellence on addressing Vaccine Hesitancy.

Professor Larson’s research focuses on the analysis of social and political factors that can affect uptake of health interventions and influence policies. Her particular interest is on risk and rumour management from clinical trials to delivery – and building public trust. She served on the FDA Medical Countermeasure (MCM) Emergency Communication Expert Working Group, and is currently Principal Investigator for a global study on acceptance of vaccination during pregnancy; an EU-funded (EBODAC) project on the deployment, acceptance and compliance of an Ebola vaccine trial in Sierra Leone; and a global study on Public Sentiments and Emotions Around Current and Potential Measures to Contain and Treat COVID-19. She is author of STUCK: How Vaccine Rumors Start – and Why They Don’t Go Away  (Oxford U Press, 2020).

Ken Rabin
Senior Scholar

Ken Rabin, MA, PhD, has more than fifty years of experience in public affairs, health communications and education. Currently, he is Special Projects Editor of the Journal of Health Communications: International Perspectives and senior counselor at Alfa Communications in Warsaw.

His clients have included Johnson and Johnson (for whom he helped develop and launch the Campaign for Nursing’s Future), Merck, Sirtex (whose SIRT liver cancer treatment technology he has helped represent in Poland for more than 10 years), L’oreal – UNESCO “For Women in Science”, PhRMA and IFPMA. His campaigns have won a Silver Anvil, Gold Quill, and Big Apple Award of the NY PRSA.

Ken retired in 2007 as executive vice president and director of international healthcare at Ruder Finn in Washington, London and Paris. During the course of his long career, he was also managing director of Burson-Marsteller’s worldwide healthcare practice, founding chairman of InterScience (a global healthcare PR company later acquired by 3BCom/Medicus), executive vice president and director of healthcare at Hill & Knowlton, and director of public affairs at Squibb (now BMS).

Prior to entering the corporate world, Ken was an associate professor and director of the graduate public relations program at American University in Washington, a communications specialist at Meharry Medical College, news director at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and a USIA foreign service information officer in Africa. His textbook, Informing the People (Longmans, 1981) written with Ray Hiebert and others, was considered the standard authority in government public information for many years. He has a BA (honors) degree from Cornell, MA degrees from Yale and the University of North Carolina, and a PhD in higher education administration from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College. He was born in Rochester, NY and has two adult children from his marriage to the late Renee Efland Rabin. He has been married since 2003 to Prof. Anna Wysocka-Rabin of the Polish National Center for Nuclear Research.

Debrework Zewdie
Senior Scholar

Debrework Zewdie is the Former Director of the World Bank Global HIV/AIDS Program and Deputy Executive Director and COO of the Global Fund. She led research, strategy, policy implementation, and management of development programs at country, regional, and global levels for the World Bank and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Dr. Zewdie conceptualized and managed the first billion-dollar multi-country HIV/AIDS Program for Africa that changed the AIDS funding landscape and pioneered the large-scale multi-sectorial response with direct financing to civil society and the private sector. She was trained as a clinical Immunologist at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London and worked on the HIV/AIDS epidemic for the last thirty-five years. Dr. Debrework was a Senior MacArthur Fellow and a Senior Leadership Fellow at Harvard University and has received honorary doctorate degrees from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and the Icahn School of Public Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Dr. Zewdie had also served as Deputy Director and later Acting Director of the National Research Institute of Health of Ethiopia and as Program Manager of Ethiopia’s AIDS/STD Prevention and Control Program. She is a Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences.