Elsie Essien, MPH is a doctoral student (PhD) in Health Services Research at the University of Maryland, School of Public Health. Prior to pursuing her doctoral degree, Elsie worked as the Program Manager for GLOhBAL (Global Learning. Optimizing health. Building Alliances Locally), the pediatrics residency Global Health Training Program at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, Northwell Health. As part of this leadership role, she co-led curriculum development for trainees on cross-cultural care, immigrant health, ethical dilemmas impacting patient care in the United Statese and international settings, and public health pandemic preparedness. She supported trainees’ research activities at international partner sites and co-facilitated pre-departure Global Health Preparatory Knowledge and Skills Boot Camp trainings for domestic and overseas global health rotations. Ms. Essien earned her Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in Health Policy and Management and her Advanced Certificate in Global Health Studies at the University at Albany-SUNY, School of Public Health. She has served as a Global Health Fellow for the Duke University Program on Global Policy and Governance in Geneva, Switzerland, where she worked with the Rights, Gender, Prevention & Community Mobilization Department at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Her research interests are in maternal, infant and child health; global health; health promotion; primary and preventive health care; social determinants of health; and improving health care quality, costs and access for vulnerable populations. Presently, she provides research support to a UCLA-based project that investigates the association between homelessness and health care utilization among Medicaid enrollees in California and examines how the association differs across gender and racial/ethnic groups. In addition, she provides research support to the Maryland Center for Health Equity (M-CHE) and co-investigators at the Center for Health Security (CHS), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on the effective and equitable COVID-19 vaccination rollout to historically underserved racial/ethnic communities in the US.
Ms. Essien received a 2021 AcademyHealth National Health Policy Conference/Health Datapalooza Alice S. Hersh Student Scholarship.