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SIPA Faculty
Patricia Mechael
Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs
Phone: 973-222-8252
pm2440@columbia.edu
Biography:
Dr. Patricia Mechael is the Executive Director of the mHealth Alliance, which is hosted by the United Nations Foundation, and faculty at the School of International and Public Affairs and 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. She 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.
For over 10 years, Dr. Mechael has published and spoken extensively on the strategic role of mobile telephony and relevant software applications within an ecosystem of eHealth, public health, and telecommunications actors in low and middle income countries as well as the increasing need to engage women and girls more effectively in designing and implementing the solutions aimed at improving their health and quality of life.
She has worked on research, program design and implementation, strategic planning, and policy development for mHealth and eHealth initiatives as well as Reproductive Health and Women’s Health and Rights with a broad range of institutions, including the Global Observatory for eHealth at the World Health Organization, International Development and Research Centre, Rutgers Center for Mobile Communication Studies, Pop!Tech, the Inter-American Development Bank, MobileActive.org, Grameen Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, American University in Cairo- Social Research Center, Ford Foundation, along with the governments of Egypt, Ghana, and Nigeria. For the past four years she has been engaged in coordinating the strategic integration of mobile phones and applications 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, SonyEricsson, and Zain (now AirTel Bharti) and continues in these efforts in her current position.
Dr. Mechael serves as an Advisory Committee Member for the Design with the Critical Mass Initiative and the Malaria Consortium. In 2011, she was awarded the Johns Hopkins University, Knowledge for the World Award. This award honors alumni who exemplify the Johns Hopkins tradition of excellence and have brought credit to the University and their profession in the international arena through their professional achievements or humanitarian service. Prior to joining the mHealth Alliance, she has held the position of 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.