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SIPA Faculty
Patricia Mechael
InterChurch Center, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 401
Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs
Phone: 973-222-8252
pm2440@columbia.edu
Biography:
Patricia Mechael is the Director of Strategic Application of Mobile Technology for Public Health and Development at the Center for Global Health and Economic Development at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. She has been actively involved in the field of International Health for 15 years with field experience in over 30 countries primarily in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Mechael publishes and speaks extensively on the strategic role of telephony and relevant software applications within an ecosystem of eHealth, public health, and telecommunications actors in low and middle income countries. She has worked on research, program design and implementation, strategic planning, and policy development for mHealth and eHealth initiatives with a broad range of institutions, including the Global Observatory for eHealth at the World Health Organization, the Rutgers Center for Mobile Communication Studies, Pop!Tech, the Inter-American Development Bank, MobileActive.org, Grameen Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Mechael has been engaged as a long-term consultant for several years managing the strategic integration of mobile phones to achieve the MDGs for health in ten countries in Africa for the Millennium Villages Project at the Earth Institute, Columbia University in partnership with Ericsson, MTN, Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development, Sony Ericsson, and Zain and continues in these efforts in her current position. Dr. Mechael serves as a Steering Committee member of the newly launched mHealth Alliance and a working group member of the Open Mobile Consortium.
Mechael has a Masters in International Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene (1998) and a PhD in Public Health and Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2006), where she specifically examined the role of mobile phones in relation to health in Egypt.