Program in Global Primary Care and Social Change

Faculty

Rich Joseph, MD, MBA

Rich is serving as the first Medical Director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Community Wellness (CCW) at Sportsmen’s Tennis and Enrichment Center in Dorchester, MA. The CCW unique partnership between a leading academic hospital—BWH—and a trusted community organization—STEC— leverages the assets of both to bring health awareness, education, and promotion to the Blue Hill Corridor community. Clinically, rich practices Weight Management and Obesity Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Rich graduated from Yale University and completed his MD/MBA at Stanford University. He trained in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. 

Dan Palazuelos, MD

Daniel Palazuelos, MD, MPH, is an Associate Physician in the Department of Medicine, Assistant Director of the Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency in the Division of Global Health Equity, and a Clinician-Educator Hospitalist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Palazuelos also serves as the Cannon Society Global Health Teaching Fellow at Harvard Medical School, as the Senior Health and Policy Advisor for Community Health Systems at Partners In Health, and as the Co-founder/Chief Strategist of Compañeros En Salud - México (PIH-Mexico).

Early in his career, Dr. Palazuelos focused on grassroots community health efforts in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Chiapas, México. The lessons learned during this time helped Dr. Palazuelos and his team co-found Compañeros En Salud, the Partners In Health sister-project in Mexico, a healthcare system strengthening organization that works with the Mexican government to deliver high-quality medical care to the rural poor and train the next generation of “change agents.”

Dr. Palazuelos has also collaborated with the UN Special Envoy Office for Health Financing to write a report outlining the case for investment in community health workers. This led to the establishment of the Financing Alliance for Health, an international organization that partners with Ministries of Health in impoverished countries to build, find funding for, and sustain ambitious national community health programs.

Rajesh Ramesh Panjabi, M.D.

Raj Panjabi is Co-Founder/CEO of Last Mile Health and Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

At age 9, Dr. Panjabi escaped a civil war in his home country of Liberia. He returned as a 24- year-old medical student to serve the people he had left behind, co-founding Last Mile Health, an affiliate of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Last Mile Health saves lives in the world's most remote communities by partnering with governments to design, scale and advocate for national networks of community health professionals. Dr. Panjabi and Last Mile Health's work has been published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, the Lancet, JAMA, and PLoS Medicine and has been featured by TIME, Fortune, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, NPR and the New York Times.

In 2016, TIME Magazine and President Bill Clinton named Dr. Panjabi to its annual list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World”, recognizing Last Mile Health's work "to put a health care worker within reach of everyone everywhere." In 2015, Fortune Magazine named Dr. Panjabi one of the "World’s 50 Greatest Leaders," recognizing Last Mile Health's work to support Liberian Government to build a national community health workforce. Dr. Panjabi is a Forbes 400 Philanthropy Fellow, a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Social Entrepreneur, and an Echoing Green Fellow. He is a recipient of the Clinton Global Citizen Award, Outstanding Recent Alumni Award from Johns Hopkins, the Distinguished Young Alumni Award from the University of North Carolina, and the Global Citizen Movement Award.

Dr. Panjabi is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, received a Masters of Public Health in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and trained in Internal Medicine and Primary Care as a Resident and Clinical Fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Claire Pierre, MD

Claire is Chief Medical Officer at Harbor Health Services and an internal medicine physician. Prior to this role, Claire served as Chief of Quality and Medical Informatics at the South End Community Health Center in Boston. She has over ten years of extensive experience in quality informatics, strategic planning, program implementation, population management, patient-centered care, and developing international health care systems.

Sara Selig, MD, MPH 

Sara Selig, MD, MPH is an Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Selig currently serves as the Associate Director for the Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment (COPE) Program, the domestic affiliate of Partners in Health.

Dr. Selig received her BA from Oberlin College, her MD from the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and her MPH from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. She completed the Doris and Howard Hiatt Residency in Global Health Equity and Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Selig was an inaugural fellow in the George Washington University based Leaders for Health Equity Fellowship.

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