At the Brown School of Public Health: Dynamic Change to Expand Impact

Irene Papanicolas Ph.D. focuses her research and teaching on assessing the performance of health systems, including methods to compare national health systems. She works closely with experts in policy, practice and research to identify cross-country learning. Papanicolas is also a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and serves as Associate Editor of the journal Health Policy.

Coming to Brown SPH from the London School of Economics, she will lead a new effort on Comparative Health Systems that will equip health systems with the knowledge and tools needed to address current and future challenges and improve their performance. She will join the School in September as professor of health services, policy, and practice. 

Andrew (Andy) Ryan Ph.D. is coming to Brown from the University of Michigan School of Public Health where he served as director of the Center for Evaluating Health Reform, and co-director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy, and associate director of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation’s Data and Methods Hub. 

A national leader in health policy research and training, Ryan will build out a new effort on Health Policy at Brown SPH focused on the effects of changes in health policy on quality of care, healthcare spending, and value, such as quantitative research to evaluate and improve payment policy in the U.S. He will collaborate across health policy researchers and centers at the university and beyond, and pilot partnerships with other disciplines, such as integrating legal scholarship to advocate for regulatory changes. Ryan will join the School in September as professor of health services, policy, and practice.

Malabika Sarker Ph.D. is coming to Brown from Brac University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. An internationally known expert in public health implementation science research and practice, she founded the Center of Excellence for Science of Implementation and Scale Up at BRAC, and leads implementation science related education, training, research and advocacy. Sarker serves on multiple advisory boards, including Lancet Global Health, Medical Research Council UK, National Institute of Health Research UK, the Evaluation Advisory Committee of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and she chairs the advisory board of the HRP Alliance for Research Capacity Strengthening.

At Brown SPH, Sarker will focus on implementation science research and teaching, build a partnership platform with other academic institutions and organizations in the global south, and lead new learning initiatives such as creating a structured global public health immersive experiential learning program for MPH and doctoral students. She will join the School in September as professor of the practice of behavioral and social sciences. 

Craig Spencer M.D., MPH will join Brown from the Columbia University Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital where he served as director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine. He has worked on health crises around the globe, including coordinating the Doctors Without Borders national epidemiological response in Guinea during the Ebola outbreak. In 2021, Spencer won an Emmy award for a short film about the medical response to the COVID pandemic in the United States. 

At Brown, Dr. Spencer will be focusing on the historical foundations of public health practice, especially with respect to global health, humanitarian response, and pandemic preparedness. Looking through the lens of history—at events as diverse as colonial sleeping sickness campaigns to the global response to COVID-19—his program will bring together learning from public health, historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists to highlight why understanding public health’s past is crucial for guiding its current and future development. Dr. Spencer will join the School in September as associate professor of the practice of health services, policy, and practice.

MEDIA CONTACT: public_health@brown.edu