Lori DiPrete Brown, MS, MTS
Associate Director for Education and Engagement, UW-Madison Global Health Institute
Faculty Associate, School of Medicine and Public Health
Faculty Associate, Department of Population Health Sciences
MPH Program Faculty
dipretebrown@wisc.edu
608-262-4081
Lori DiPrete Brown joined the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health in 2003. Since that time she has played a leadership role in developing and sustaining global health programs, including Graduate and Undergraduate Certificates in Global Health, and a new campus-wide service-learning initiative, Wisconsin without Borders. She co-directs core graduate and undergraduate courses in global public health, as well as electives related to quality improvement in low-income countries, and the health and human rights of children. She advises advanced students on independent global public health field study, and is engaged in field courses in Mexico and Ecuador. She also leads the quality improvement component of UW’s emergency medicine partnership in Ethiopia. As an advisor to PEPFAR and USAID, she has developed standards and strategies for meeting the needs of AIDS orphans. This effort took her to Ethiopia and Tanzania to engage with national leaders from 14 countries where the programs are being implemented. Currently she is facilitating a UW research circle (FACES) that will further explore rights-based, whole of government strategies to improve the health and well being of highly vulnerable children around the world.
A native of Rhode Island, DiPrete Brown received a BA from Yale in 1983, served in the US Peace Corps in Honduras from 1983 to 1985, and then pursued interdisciplinary graduate work at Harvard, earning an MS in Public Health (1988), with a focus on global health, and an MTS in Theological Studies (1988) with a focus on comparative religion and faith-based movements for social change. She was a founding member of the Harvard Health and Human Rights group, and carried out related research in Nicaragua. After graduating she continued as a Research Associate at the Harvard Institute for International Development, where she conducted health services research in Costa Rica and Cameroon until 1990.
From 1990 to 2003 DiPrete Brown served as a researcher and Deputy Director for USAID’s Quality Assurance Project, collaborating with international organizations such as USAID, WHO, the Pan American Health Organization, Save the Children, CARE, and the Aga Khan Foundation. During this period she led health care quality improvement efforts and contributed to health system strengthening in 13 countries. Her most notable achievements include leading a collaboration to develop a national quality assurance program in Chile, overseeing a multi-country research effort on patient-provider communication in (Honduras, Trinidad, and Egypt), applying methods from QI in health care to water and sanitation programs in Guatemala, and developing prototype methods and networks for use in quality assurance and implementation science efforts. She also contributed two volumes to the Aga Khan Foundation Management Advancement Program Series, which was widely used in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In 2003 she led a regional policy study for PAHO, which explored the role of quality assurance in health sector reform.
Lori values the opportunity to work with UW-Madison students. She defines global health broadly, taking into account root determinants of suffering and well-being such as access to food, water, health care, education, a peaceful existence, an opportunity to live in a sustainable and harmonious relationship to the natural environment, and realization of political, civil and cultural rights. Lori blogs about global health at http://www.globalhealthreflections.wordpress.com. She welcomes topic suggestions from students and colleagues. Resume
Please consult the UW Time Table or the Department of Population Health Sciences www.pophealth.wisc.edu for more information about the following courses:
PHS 370 Introduction to Public Health: Local to Global Perspectives
PHS 640 Foundations in Global Health Practice
PHS 644 Inter-disciplinary Perspectives on Global Health and Disease
PHS 650 Public Health and Human Rights: Meeting the Needs of Vulnerable Children
PHS 650 Quality Evaluation and Improvement in Low- Resource Settings