Adrienne Pichon
Doctoral Student, Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University
Adrienne Pichon is a Research Coordinator under Dr. Noemie Elhadad in Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics. Her research interests center around leveraging emerging health technologies coupled with user-centered design to improve access to health-related information, access to care, and meaningful and actionable personal insights, particularly for vulnerable and marginalized populations.
Adrienne Pichon
Biomedical Informatics Research Coordinator, Columbia University
Adrienne Pichon is a Research Coordinator under Dr. Noemie Elhadad in Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics. Her research interests center around leveraging emerging health technologies coupled with user-centered design to improve access to health-related information, access to care, and meaningful and actionable personal insights, particularly for vulnerable and marginalized populations. The Citizen Endo project and Phendo app harness the power of citizen science to better understand and manage endometriosis.
Working Group Affiliation
Nancy King Reame
Professor, Department of Emerita of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, School of Nursing, Columbia University
Nancy King Reame, MSN, PhD, FAAN authored the chapter "Toxic Shock Syndrome and Tampons: The Birth of a Movement and a Research Vagenda" in The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies (Bobel et al) 2020. The handbook, which is free and down-loadable can be found here: https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/book/10.1007%2F978-981-15-0614-7.
Nancy King Reame
Mary Dickey Lindsay Professor (Emerita) of Health Promotion and Risk Reduction, School of Nursing
Nancy King Reame, MSN, PhD, FAAN authored the chapter "Toxic Shock Syndrome and Tampons: The Birth of a Movement and a Research Vagenda" in The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies (Bobel et al) 2020. The handbook, which is free and down-loadable can be found here: https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/book/10.1007%2F978-981-15-0614-7. In 2020, she was a member of the National Academy of Medicine committee that published the consensus study report on The Clinical Utility of Compounded Bioidentical Hormone Therapy in response to a request by the Food and Drug Administration. Nancy Reame provides ongoing commentaries for the journal Menopause, on such issues as the safety and efficacy of new breakthrough drugs for the treatment of menopausal hot flashes: KNDY neuron antagonists (Reame, April 2020), estetrol (August, 2020), and the effects of COVID on the management of menopausal symptoms (July, 2021). She continues to serve as a regular member of the screening panel for the prestigious Kavli Prize in Science Journalism, the annual international award program begun in 1945 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for excellence in science journalism for the public.
Working Group Affiliations
Maggie Schmitt
Doctoral Student, Gender, Adolescent Transitions and Environment(GATE), Columbia University
Maggie Schmitt, MPH, is a Project Director for the Gender, Adolescent Transitions and Environment (GATE) Program, housed in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Ms. Schmitt has been at CU MSPH for over 8 years, working on a range of health systems, reproductive health and humanitarian response research initiatives.
Maggie Schmitt
Project Director, Gender, Adolescent Transitions and Environment (GATE)
Maggie Schmitt, MPH, is a Project Director for the Gender, Adolescent Transitions and Environment (GATE) Program, housed in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Ms. Schmitt has been at CU MSPH for over 8 years, working on a range of health systems, reproductive health and humanitarian response research initiatives. Most recently, her work has focused on the inclusion of menstrual hygiene within humanitarian emergencies, in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee. This includes supporting the development of both improved evidence and practical guidance for the integration of menstrual hygiene into ongoing emergency response operations.
Working Group Affiliation
Amitoj Singh
Graduate Student, School of Journalism, Columbia University
Amitoj Singh is currently an M.A Candidate in the Political Concentration at the Columbia School of Journalism. Amitoj has recently returned from Iraq where he was working towards reporting a multimedia project highlighting the colossal social devastation that ISIS has caused the Yazidi women.
Graduate Student, School of Journalism, Columbia University
Amitoj Singh is currently an M.A Candidate in the Political Concentration at the Columbia School of Journalism. Amitoj has recently returned from Iraq where he was working towards reporting a multimedia project highlighting the colossal social devastation that ISIS has caused the Yazidi women. In particular, he intends to find the words to relate the pain, suffering, and stigma of Yazidi women who had to leave their children, born of ISIS fathers, behind because their community wouldn’t accept them.
Previously, Amitoj has been News Editor and Principal Anchor of India’s NDTV (New Delhi Television), a pioneer in India’s news television and digital journalism, with a large English-language viewership.
Most recently, he won the Dag Hammarskjöld Journalism fellowship to the United Nations which allowed him to work as a journalist for 3 months at the UN headquarters in New York in 2018.
Amitoj has reported and presented news surrounding the 2019 General Elections in India, the 2018 Midterm Elections in the USA, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland 2018, the Presidential Election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the focus of Facebook and Whatsapp in fighting fake news in San Francisco, and the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup in Australia.
While at NDTV for more than 12 years, he anchored NDTV’s Flagship and Primetime shows ‘Jai Jawan’, Trending @10PM, Good Morning India, Livestream, India vs Fake News, Versus, Youthquake, Newsbreak and Turning Point, amongst numerous breaking news developments.
Working Group Affiliation
Menstrual Health and Gender Justice, Media Fellow (2020)
Marni Sommer
Associate Professor, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Marni Sommer, DrPH, MSN, RN, has worked in global health and development on issues ranging from improving access to essential medicines to humanitarian relief in conflict settings. Dr. Sommer's particular areas of expertise include conducting participatory research with adolescents, understanding and promoting healthy transitions to adulthood, the intersection of public health and education, gender and sexual health, and the implementation and evaluation of adolescent-focused interventions.
Marni Sommer
Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Marni Sommer, DrPH, MSN, RN, has worked in global health and development on issues ranging from improving access to essential medicines to humanitarian relief in conflict settings. Dr. Sommer's particular areas of expertise include conducting participatory research with adolescents, understanding and promoting healthy transitions to adulthood, the intersection of public health and education, gender and sexual health, and the implementation and evaluation of adolescent-focused interventions. Her doctoral research explored girls' experiences of menstruation, puberty and schooling in Tanzania, and the ways in which the onset of puberty might be disrupting girls' academic performance and healthy transition to adulthood. Dr. Sommer's current research focuses on the intersections of gender, health and education for girls and boys transitioning into adulthood in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
Working Group Affiliation
Anja Tolonen
Assistant Professor of Economics, Barnard College
Anja Tolonen is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University. She works on economic development and gender. One strand focuses on health and gender, including menstruation and school absenteeism, stigma around menstruation, and household health investment and knowledge.
Anja Tolonen
Assistant Professor of Economics, Barnard College
Anja Tolonen is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University. She works on economic development and gender. One strand focuses on health and gender, including menstruation and school absenteeism, stigma around menstruation, and household health investment and knowledge. Another strand focuses on the local welfare effects of natural resource extraction in Africa, including effects on women’s employment, gender norms, health and criminality. Her research methods include quasi-experimental analysis and randomized control trials, and she often uses large datasets. She has peer-reviewed publications in World Development, The Economic Journal and Ambio. At Barnard, she teaches Empirical Development Economics and Econometrics. She is an affiliated faculty at the Center for Development Economics and Policy at Columbia University. Prof. Tolonen is an external research member at Oxford Center for Analysis of Resource Rich Economies (University of Oxford), and UNESCO and The World Bank has funded her research. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from University of Gothenburg in 2015 and has been a visiting researcher at University of Oxford and University of California at Berkeley. During the academic year 2017-2018 she will be on an academic sabbatical at Princeton University (fall 2017) and New York University (spring 2018).
Working Group Affiliations
Inga Winkler
Lecturer in the Discipline of Human Rights in the Department of Political Science, Columbia University
Inga Winkler is a lecturer in the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Human Rights Program. Her research agenda is held together by her interest in socio-economic rights, development, gender, social justice and substantive equality. Her policy experience over the last years has enabled her to follow discussions at various levels from global processes to local challenges which is reflected in her research approaches. Current research projects focus on the Sustainable Development Goals and human rights, the UN Special Procedures, menstrual health and wellbeing, and the human right to sanitation.
Inga Winkler
Lecturer in the Discipline of Human Rights in the Department of Political Science, Columbia University
Inga Winkler is a lecturer in the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Human Rights Program. Her research agenda is held together by her interest in socio-economic rights, development, gender, social justice and substantive equality. Her policy experience over the last years has enabled her to follow discussions at various levels from global processes to local challenges which is reflected in her research approaches. Current research projects focus on the Sustainable Development Goals and human rights, the UN Special Procedures, menstrual health and wellbeing, and the human right to sanitation.
Previously, she has been in residence as a visiting scholar the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU, at Stellenbosch (South Africa) and at Berkeley. She is an affiliate of the Economic and Social Rights Working Group at the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut.
Prior to joining Columbia, Inga was the Legal Adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, who was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. Inga has consulted for various international organizations and NGOs including the European Parliament, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, WaterAid, and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.
Inga holds a German law degree and a doctorate in international human rights law (summa cum laude).
Working Group Affiliation
Menstrual Health and Gender Justice, Project Director