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Winter 2022 Healthcare in Action

Projects, research and initiatives implemented by the Global Health community transcend national borders and regional interests, while taking cultural differences and diversity fully into account. First hand field experience, research, and service related opportunities are invaluable to developing an in-depth understanding of the complexities of global health problems. What are examples of global health work being done in other countries and regions? What lessons can we bring back when working with diverse populations? Join us for an interdisciplinary discussion on how members of our UCSD Global Health community have examined health issues and policies in practice.

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Please check out the Winter 2022 Conversations in Global Health: Healthcare in Action Zoom recording on Youtube!


The UC San Diego Global Health Program and Students for Global Health held our seventeenth event in Quarterly Conversations in Global Health on Wednesday, February 1st, 2022 through Zoom! This quarter’s panel spoke to the topic of examining health issues and policies with first-hand experience. 


Quarterly Conversations provides a forum for the Global Health community to come together to discuss relevant issues in the field from an interdisciplinary perspective and increase community interaction at UC San Diego.


Thank you to the community tables who participated in the event’s networking session: Memo @ UC San Diego, Project Rishi, and UCSD Flying Samaritans.


We would like to give our special appreciation to our event co-sponsors: Aya Healthcare, UC San Diego Global Health Institute, UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences, UC San Diego Global Health Program, UC San Diego Center for Global Mental Health, and UC San Diego Students for Global Health.

Panel Recap


We were delighted to have Dr. Thomas Csordas, Director of UC San Diego’s Global Health Program, moderating the event as our Master of Ceremonies.



Joseph Caperna, MD


Dr. Joseph Caperna was born and raised in Ohio. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, from Kenyon College in 1984. He then graduated from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (Cleveland, OH) in 1990. He has practiced medicine since that time, completing Internal Medicine residency training at the UCSD Medical Center in 1993. He is board certified in Internal Medicine. In 1994, he was awarded a master’s degree (MPH) in public health from UC Berkeley. He completed a three year fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at UCSD 1995-98. He was a full time faculty member at UCSD, Clinical Professor of Medicine, from 1998 to early 2013.

In 1998, he received the UCSD Humanitarian Award for helping to start a blood bank in a rural area of Peru, called Huaraz. In 2007, he received the UCSD Diversity Award, recognizing his contributions to underserved populations. In 2011, he received the Kenyon College Humanitarian Award for volunteer work in Africa and Peru. In 2012, he was awarded the San Diego County Brad Truax Award for Community Service in the area of HIV care and treatment. He is also an American Academy of HIV Medicine Specialist, passing the credentialing examination every two years since 2006. He has been Board Certified in Internal Medicine since 1993.

Anita Raj, PhD, MS


Anita Raj is a Tata Chancellor Professor of Society and Health. She is a Professor in both the Departments of Medicine and Education Studies and the Director of the Center on Gender Equity and Health (GEH). Her research, including both epidemiologic and intervention studies, focuses on sexual and reproductive health, maternal and child health, women’s economic empowerment, and gender inequalities including gender-based violence and child, early and forced marriage.

Dr. Raj has approximately 300 peer-reviewed publications, and her work has been featured in major media outlets in the US, the UK, and in India. She created and leads the EMERGE platform, which provides open access to evidence-based measures on gender equality and empowerment (GEE), builds national indicators on GEE in global survey research partners for tracking SDG5, and provides trainings and technical assistance for researchers and implementers on measurement science and empowerment. She has served as an advisor to UN Women, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and was invited to speak at the UN General Assembly on the issue of child marriage.

Since 2020, she has been leading research and measurement in the area of COVID-19 and gender and secondary impacts of the pandemic on women and socially marginalized groups in the US and globally.


Fonna Forman, JD, PHD


Fonna Forman (JD, PhD Chicago) is Associate Professor of Political Science and Founding Director of the Center on Global Justice at the University of California, San Diego. She is known internationally for her revisionist research on Adam Smith, recuperating the ethical, spatial and public dimensions of his thought. Since 2009 she has served as Editor of the Adam Smith Review, the premier international journal of Smith’s thought.

In recent years, Forman has also partnered closely with renowned UCSD-Scripps climatologist Veerabhadran Ramanathan on a variety of projects related to climate disruption, and the disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations, including two 2017 papers on “climate migration” and ‘climate justice’ for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Social Sciences; and several international and state-wide task forces on climate change solutions.

Forman is an advocate for engaged social science, and deepening university-community research partnerships. In 2014, she was appointed by British PM Gordon Brown to serve on the Global Citizenship Commission, advising UN policy on human rights in the 21st century. At UC San Diego, she is affiliated with the Center for Energy Research, the Institute for Public Health, the Deep Decarbonization Initiative, and the Border Solutions Alliance. She currently serves on the advisory boards of the School of Public Health, the Global Health Program, the Center for Global Mental Health, the Urban Studies and Planning Program, and the Center for Tomorrow’s California. She is an Inaugural UCSD Changemaker Faculty Fellow for 2019-20.

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