Malcolm Bryant, MBBS, MPH
Malcolm Bryant, IDEAS Technical Associate, is a public health physician with over 30 years of experience as a clinician, educator, researcher, and manager of public health programs. He has devoted his career to the improvement of health outcomes by increasing access to high-quality health services.
Dr. Bryant has designed and implemented reproductive and child health programs, with continuing emphasis on the determinants of health and the development of community-based health systems. He has long-term experience in Africa (Zimbabwe and Cameroon), and has conducted extensive short-term consultancies in more than 15 African countries as well as in Haiti, Latin America, and Asia. In addition to the design and implementation of health programs, Dr. Bryant has evaluated numerous USAID field projects in Haiti, Nicaragua, Madagascar, Senegal, and the Philippines.
Dr. Bryant works equally effectively with civil society organizations and public-sector agencies. Through IDEAS, he assisted the Rwandan Ministry of Health in the design of Rwanda’s new national policy and five-year strategy for quality improvement. Most recently, he worked with the Ministry of Health in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to introduce an innovative methodology for maintaining and improving quality at the point of service delivery by bringing together health system and community approaches to care.
Dr. Bryant is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Center for Global Health and Development at Boston University’s School of Public Health, where he manages a research program seeking to improve the quality and coverage of services to orphans and vulnerable children around the world through applied, operations, and evaluation research.
Dr. Bryant is fluent in French.
email: mbryant@ideas4hlth.com
Ann Buxbaum, MSS, MPA
For more than 25 years, Ann Buxbaum has supported developing-country and domestic partners in building leadership capacity; managing programs; facilitating workshops and meetings; and communicating public health information to health providers, managers, and ordinary citizens. She has used her writing and editing skills to develop many successful grant applications to the US government and private foundations and to create lively, practical materials for developing-country managers and health providers. She has particular interest in encouraging and assisting organizations to evaluate their own work.
She has provided assistance in Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Swaziland, South Africa, and Madagascar); Asia (Bangladesh, India, the Philippines); and the former Soviet Union (Russia and Romania). She has also applied tools and approaches from the developing world to underserved communities in the US. For five years, she contributed to the creation and growth of a Japanese health development NGO and has conducted strategic planning exercises for Japanese development professionals.
Through IDEAS, Ms. Buxbaum has assisted Management Sciences for Health to create and apply an innovative leadership development process for senior managers and management teams. She has carried out numerous writing and editing assignments with varied organizations, including assisting a group of Canadian NGOs to assess the impact of their services and co-editing a book based on their findings. Recently, she worked with a Nigerian project team to create simple, readable guides for HIV/AIDS program managers in and beyond Nigeria. She also edited a computer-based handbook that helps health care managers and service providers taking leadership roles in strengthening health systems.
email: abuxbaum@ideas4hlth.com
Robert Buxbaum, MD, FACP, FAAHPM
Robert Buxbaum is a physician whose practice is devoted to palliative and end-of life care, with a focus on the complexities of geriatric medicine. He conducts his day-to-day work with a team of physicians, nurse practitioners, physical and occupational therapists, and social workers. A large part of his work involves teaching physicians in training—medical students, residents, and fellows—and orienting them to the special needs of dying patients and their families.
Before taking on his current specialty role, Dr. Buxbaum spent three decades as a primary care physician with a large multi-specialty group practice in Boston, Massachusetts, caring for a panel of nearly 3000 patients. He has always been an activist in public health, taking cutting-edge public policy positions pertaining to health for the poor, urban planning for healthier lifestyles, and end-of-life care.
email: robert_buxbaum@hms.harvard.edu
Peter Cross, MA
Peter Cross, the president of IDEAS, is a management systems expert and economist who has assisted national health systems in more than 25 developing countries to make evidence-based decisions, which improve health outcomes within resource constraints. He is a strong advocate for performance measures, incentives to reward achievement, and public-private partnerships. His experience spans all six of WHO’s health systems “building blocks”: health services; a health workforce; health (and management) information systems; medical products, vaccines and technologies; health systems financing; and leadership and governance.
Mr. Cross has 30-plus years of resident experience in developing countries in Asia (Nepal and Afghanistan), Latin America (Bolivia, Honduras, and Nicaragua) and Africa (South Africa) and a wealth of short-term work in more than 20 other countries. He has directed several large, complex field projects. He has used his strong quantitative and writing skills to lead or contribute significantly to a dozen successful proposals for large USAID and IDB health projects.
In recent IDEAS assignments, he assisted the Afghan Ministry of Public Health to develop and implement a national policy for the private health sector, which is designed to increase private-sector contributions to government health goals. Also in Afghanistan he contributed to the development of the Afghan Social Marketing Organization, which is assuming expanded responsibility for USAID’s social marketing efforts.
In Pakistan, Mr. Cross led two teams that worked with the Ministry of Health’s Malaria Control Directorate to successfully resolve conditions that were impeding their approval for a Global Fund grant. He also assisted the PRIDE Project with health financing and planning processes and with its final assessment of project accomplishments. He has recently worked with Rwanda’s pharmaceutical procurement agency to strengthen financial management.
Mr. Cross is fluent in Spanish and has basic skills in French, Dari, and Nepali.
email: pcross@ideas4hlth.com
Charles Dickinson, MS, Mgmt
Charles Dickinson is an experienced manager and consultant who is skilled in planning and implementing systems development and organizational change initiatives. He has worked in both the public and private sectors and has extensive experience in using technology for management information, collaboration, and learning. For over 15 years, he founded and managed a consulting group specializing in the development of technology-based training and performance support systems.
After making a career transition into international public health, he served as Senior Manager for Knowledge Exchange at Management Sciences for Health. Since joining IDEAS, Mr. Dickinson has applied and adapted his management and consulting experience to strengthen monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems for national disease programs supported by the Global Fund.
Through the USAID-funded Grants Management Solutions (GMS) project, he has assisted national programs in tuberculosis (Nepal, Armenia, Bhutan, Fiji), HIV/AIDS (Ghana, Armenia, Bhutan), and malaria (Pakistan) to assess their M&E systems using the M&E Systems Strengthening Tool (MESST). In addition, he has helped these programs to develop national M&E Plans according to Global Fund guidelines. In 2009, Mr. Dickinson received a commendation from the GMS Program for outstanding technical support that enabled Pakistan’s Country Coordinating Mechanism to effectively oversee the country’s Global Fund grants.
Most recently, Mr. Dickinson has worked with national disease programs to enable them to use the Routine Data Quality Assurance Tool, a methodology developed by MEASURE Evaluation for program managers to audit indicator-related data and strengthen routine reporting systems.
Mr. Dickinson speaks French.
email: cdickinson@ideas4hlth.com
Ileana M. Fajardo, MS, MS, MPH
Ileana M. Fajardo is IDEAS’ Operations Officer, and is a skilled manager with more than 25 years of financial and administrative experience for large projects in Honduras, Nicaragua and South Africa. In this capacity, she directly supervised administrative and technical staff and ensured contract compliance with complex US Government contracts. She has organized large international conferences and participated in domestic research projects: developing protocols, training interviewers, and analyzing data. She has worked in Africa, Asia, Latin America.
Through IDEAS, Ms. Fajardo has supported the Global Fund in Honduras, Armenia and Mauritius. In Honduras she provided technical assistance in management and administrative systems to the Honduran National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS. As a result of the team consultancy the Association developed financial and administrative, human resources and M&E operational manuals. In Armenia, she supported the Ministry of Health, as Principal Recipient of Global Fund TB grants, to improve its management, personnel, and financial capacity to administer the funds. In Mauritius, as a member of a consulting team, she supported the Mauritius Family Planning and Welfare Association in strengthening its management and reporting systems for the implementation of its HIV/AIDS Round 8 Grant. One of the team’s major contributions was the development and consistent use of tools and standard operating procedures.
Ms. Fajardo is bilingual in Spanish and English, and speaks French.
E-mail: ifajardo@ideas4hlth.com
Douglas Huber, MD, MSc
Douglas Huber is a physician and reproductive health expert who has provided leadership for large-scale family planning and reproductive health programs in 41 countries. For more than 30 years, Dr. Huber has held senior positions in international reproductive health organizations. He has led innovations that have significantly increased contraceptive prevalence in varied settings, including successful community-based programs in Bangladesh and Afghanistan that served as models for national scale-up of family planning services.
Dr. Huber has served on expert international committees for the World Health Organization and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. In this capacity, he contributed to the widely used Global Handbook for Family Planning Providers and newly developed family planning guidelines for health providers and clients. He has served on multiple evaluation teams assessing service delivery and research programs in family planning/reproductive health. He was a founding organizer of the Emergency Contraception Consortium and of the Post-abortion Care Consortium (PAC), which has mobilized global support for post-abortion family planning.
With IDEAS, Dr. Huber provides technical guidance for a project, supported by the US Centers for Disease Control, to develop evaluation tools and monitor the quality of male circumcision for HIV prevention in developing countries. As co-chair and board liaison for the Family Planning/Reproductive Health working group of Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH), he works closely with leaders in Christian health associations and Islamic health networks in Africa.
E-mail: dhuber@ideas4hlth.com
Thomas Park, MA, MPH
Thomas Park is a senior manager and strategic development specialist with more than 30 years of technical and management field experience in the developing world. He has worked both as a USAID Foreign Service Officer and an independent consultant, developing national programs and supporting missions’ portfolios. As an IDEAS staff member, Mr. Park continues to devote much of his energy to building strong, productive relationships with senior country officials and donor agencies.
After two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Gabon and Ethiopia, Mr. Park began his professional career by joining USAID as a health officer in Mali and Honduras and was rapidly promoted to the position of mission director in Benin, Guinea, and Ethiopia. He served as chief of party of a large USAID project in Uganda and as an agricultural development officer in Nigeria.
Since retiring from USAID, Mr. Park has carried out health program development consultancies in Rwanda, Congo Brazzaville, Afghanistan, Philippines, Malawi, and Ethiopia. Most recently, he evaluated large USAID-funded health programs in China and Pakistan.
Mr. Park is fluent in French and competent in Spanish.
E-mail: tpark@ideas4hlth.com
Christine Pilcavage, MPH, MIA
For 15 years, Christine Pilcavage has advised diverse international stakeholders in government, non-government, and grassroots organizations on business processes, cultural competence, and the application of public health best practices. She has worked with USAID, the Japanese Government, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the World Health Organizaion on population, health, and nutrition issues in Africa and Asia. She helped to negotiate the first multi-year grant in infectious diseases with the Japanese government. She is skilled in collaborating with multiple partners, HIV/AIDS counseling, facilitation, monitoring and evaluation, and capacity building.
As a member of IDEAS, Ms. Pilcavage has supported the Global Fund by helping to strengthen the secretariat of the Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs) of Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, resulting in the preparation of various manuals for program management. She has also worked with a former Senior Vice Minister of Health of Japan to promote Japanese government action on a series of critical global health issues; she made a substantive contribution to an advocacy effort that succeeded in placing health system strengthening on the agenda at the 2008 G8 Summit in Toyako, Japan.
She is a member of the Global Health Governance Study Group of the S.T. Lee’s Project on Global Governance housed in the Centre of Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She is writing a history and analysis of Japan’s overseas development assistance in the health sector and global health governance.
Ms. Pilcavage is fluent in Japanese and has a basic knowledge of Spanish.
E-mail: cpilcavage@ideas4hlth.com
Charles Stover, MPA
Charles Stover is a senior consultant who also serves as IDEAS’ treasurer. For more than three decades, he has assisted governments, nonprofit organizations, and the for-profit sector to strengthen the health financing systems that underlie high-quality health services. His areas of expertise encompass government and private health insurance, hospital management, managed care, health financing programs including user fee systems, decentralization, resource allocation, and health system restructuring.
Early in his career, Mr. Stover held high-level positions in health and human services in Massachusetts; he then served as chief operating officer of a 275-bed hospital and executive director of a prepaid managed care plan. When he turned his attention to international public health, he served as chief of party, project director, and lead technical advisor for large USAID health financing and reform projects in the Philippines and Kenya. He has provided short-term technical assistance in fifteen countries in Africa, Asia, and the Latin American/Caribbean region.
Mr. Stover has completed six Global Fund country assignments through the Grant Management Solutions (GMS) project. He was the leader of two GMS teams in the Philippines — working with the Department of Health and with an NGO managing five grants — and two in Bhutan, assisting the Ministry of Health to prepare a closeout plan for a grant that was ending and to successfully apply for new tuberculosis grants. He also served on teams building the capacity of the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) in Pakistan and restructuring the CCM in Jordan, where he provided assistance in strategic planning for governance reforms in the government’s provincial referral hospitals. In 2009, Mr. Stover received a commendation from the GMS Program for outstanding technical support that enabled Pakistan’s Country Coordinating Mechanism to effectively oversee the country’s Global Fund grants.
Mr. Stover is fluent in French.
E-mail: cstover@ideas4hlth.com
