The Union Courses Online

Course Director: Riitta Dlodlo
Senior Faculty: E. Jane Carter, Einar Heldal

Course Faculty: Tara Bouton, Sheilla Chebore, Steven Graham, Stephen John,  Patricia Macias, Nqobile Mlilo, Tafadzwa Sibanda, Pranay Sinha, Annika Sweetland and Stella Zawedde.

Instructional Designer: ​Sandy Picken
Project Manager: Lara Garrido-Herrer

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Dr Tara C. Bouton is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine of Boston University and an attending physician in the Section of Infectious Diseases at Boston Medical Center. Dr. Bouton’s research focuses on the impact of HIV infection and substance use on evolution and transmission of drug resistant tuberculosis and improving outcomes in these diseases. She is also working to better understand transmission and viral dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 variants. She has lived and worked in Brazil, Ghana, Botswana, and South Africa.

Prof E. Jane Carter has dedicated her career to tuberculosis. She is both an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University, USA, and Director of the Brown Kenya Medical Exchange Programme at Moi University, Kenya. In Rhode Island she worked with the Department of Health sponsored TB Clinic for over 22 years. She is a past president of The Union. In recognition of her global health work, she was awarded the World Lung Health Award from the American Thoracic Society in 2013. Her TB work has focused on active case finding in resource limited areas as well as improving the care cascade for paediatric care and prevention.

Sheilla Chebore has a master's degree in medical microbiology and is currently doing a PhD. Sheilla has over 20 years’ experience in the field of laboratory science, working in diagnostic clinical settings, research settings and public health programmatic settings both in public, international agencies and non-profit organizations. Sheilla also has over 10 years’ experience in public health programmatic settings with extensive knowledge in TB, HIV, AMR and COVID 19 laboratory diagnostics. She has supported and consulted for the Kenyan National Tuberculosis Lung and Disease Programme (NTLD-P) and national public health laboratories. Sheilla is a trainer, mentor, assessor and has supported the Ministry of Health of Kenya in designing, planning, coordinating and rolling out policies and guidelines, strategic plans, implementation and monitoring of connectivity solutions and curriculum development in laboratory strengthening, quality management systems, regulated clinical trials, prevalence surveys and operational research. 

Dr Riitta Dlodlo has worked in both clinical and programmatic tuberculosis (TB), TB-HIV and management of health services and projects for over 30 years in Zimbabwe and other sub-Saharan African countries. She is passionate about person-centred and decentralised TB services, capacity development of healthcare professionals and use of routine TB and comorbidity data for decision-making and strengthening of services at all levels of the health system. Riitta serves as senior advisor with The Union. She has been a faculty member and course director at several Union’s national, regional and international TB courses for which she has designed the training curriculums. She has published in TB, including child TB, COVID-19 and TB and TB-HIV mortality. From 2020, she has been The Union’s principal investigator for a cooperative agreement between the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The Union and a TB focal point in the GFATM Technical Review Panel.

Prof Steve Graham is senior technical advisor on child and adolescent tuberculosis and lung health with The Union. He trained as a paediatrician and is Professor of International Child Health with the University of Melbourne, Australia. Steve has many years of clinical, research and training experience in child and adolescent tuberculosis in the African and Asia-Pacific regions. He is a founding core member and past Chair of the WHO Stop TB Partnership’s Child and Adolescent TB Working Group. He has a particular interest in implementing and evaluating integrated strategies to detect, treat and prevent tuberculosis, including drug-resistant tuberculosis. To that end, his work with The Union has included the development of training tools and job aides to support healthcare workers at all levels of care in tuberculosis-endemic settings.

Dr Einar Heldal was with the national TB programme in Nicaragua, a model programme for DOTS development, from 1987 to 1990. He was the head of the TB registry in Norway from 1994-2005. Since then, Einar has been an independent TB consultant, part time with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. He has extensive international experience in TB programme support and reviews, long-term in Russia, East Timor and Zimbabwe. Einar worked with WHO and many non-governmental organisations, especially in recording and reporting, use of routine TB data for management, operational research, MDR-TB, LTBI, ethics, migration, and prison health. He has published on TB epidemiology, TB mortality and BCG vaccination.

Dr Stephen John has been active in TB, Leprosy and HIV control in Nigeria since 2003, having served as a TB Programme Manager and an HIV Agency Executive Secretary. Stephen is currently a Health Ministry Director of Planning, Research and Statistics. Stephen has served as a trainer at the National TB and Leprosy Training Center Zaria, Nigeria, a mentor to State TB and Leprosy Programme Managers and a university teacher. He has been a consultant for several organisations and is presently serving as a technical consultant to the United Nations Office for Project Services.
Stephen is a graduate of Medicine, has a Master of Public Health/International Course in Health Development and a has Professional Diploma in Education. Dr Jhon serves as a member of the Board of Directors of The Union.

Dr C. Patricia Macias is native of Mexico City, Mexico, and a clinician physician specialising on pulmonary medicine. She has worked for The Union since 2014 as a faculty member, and she has contributed to several Union DR-TB courses in the Eastern Mediterranean and Asian regions. She worked with the WHO updating and implementing the TB program in Libya. She has participated in multiple US CDC TB projects in the Asian Pacific region. In the US, she has worked for more than 15 years with immigrant communities, has delivered courses and was the Medical Director of the TB Unit at the Cook County Department of Public Health in the greater Chicago area of Illinois. She was also associate professor for Rush University, and Pulmonary Doctor and Critical Care Physician at John H Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago. Patricia has published many articles on TB.

Nqobile Mlilo is the monitoring and evaluation specialist at The Union Zimbabwe Trust. He <span style="-webkit-user-drag: none;-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; user-select: text;background-image:var(--urlContextualSpellingAndGrammarErrorV2, url(" data:image="" svg+xml;base64,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"='));" border-bottom:transparent;font-variant-ligatures:="" none;white-space-collapse:="" preserve;="" background-position-x:0%;background-position-y:100%'="">provides technical support to the Zimbabwe National TB Control Program and has been working in the field of public health monitoring and evaluation of TB/HIV programs for 19 years. He led the development, pilot and rollout of the NTP TB health facility recording and reporting tools to routinely collect and report TB data starting at health facilities and the introduction and roll out of the District Health Information Software for the TB component in the country. Nqobile was one of the key developers of the “Making Sense of TB data concept - Guide for collection, analysis and use of TB data for health workers in Zimbabwe”, implemented in Zimbabwe and beyond. The course features at the Union World Lung Conference every year. Nqobile has taught previous editions of the Principles of TB Care and Prevention course.

Dr Tafadzwa Priscilla Sibanda is a Public Health Specialist with a decade of experience in the health sector in Zimbabwe. She has worked through the various levels of health services from an intern at a tertiary hospital to positions at the district level for four years and MCH/TB/HIV programme manager at the provincial level for four years. Tafadzwa has been involved in both clinical and programme management, as well as monitoring and evaluation of these programs. Since January 2017, she is in charge of an Opportunistic Infections Clinic at Mpilo Central Hospital which takes care of one of the largest cohorts of people living with HIV in Zimbabwe.

Prof Pranay Sinha is an Infectious Diseases physician and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University. Dr. Sinha attended the University of Virginia School of Medicine and finished residency training at Yale-New Haven Hospital where he received a distinction in Global Health and Equity. He has been involved in TB research since 2014 and his primary interest is in the relationship between undernutrition and TB. Through epidemiological studies & health economic modelling, he hopes find ways to use nutritional policy to end TB. Dr Sinha has field experience in India, Benin, Togo, and South Africa. 

Prof Annika Sweetland is a social worker and Assistant Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences in Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons/Mailman School of Public Health. She is also Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the TB and Mental Health Working Group at The Union. For the past 20 years, she has conducted global mental health work in Latin America, Africa and the United States, with a topical focus on TB and depression. She is currently leading a large-scale cluster randomized trial in South Africa to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of Interpersonal Counseling (IPC), a brief (4 session) evidence-based treatment for depression that can be delivered by lay counselors, to improve TB and mental health outcomes.

Dr Stella Zawedde-Muyanja is a medical doctor and research scientist based at the Infectious Diseases Institute, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda. Her primary research focus is implementation research to improve delivery of and access to TB care services. While working with the Union Uganda, she led the pilot implementation of a project to decentralize child TB services in Uganda (the DETECT Child TB project). In partnership with the NTLP, this project trained primary healthcare workers to screen and diagnose children for TB using both bacteriological confirmation and where necessary, clinical diagnosis. The project resulted in a doubling of the number of children diagnosed with TB and an increase in uptake of TB preventive therapy among child household contacts of bacteriologically confirmed TB patients. Following this, Dr. Zawedde-Muyanja has worked with the Uganda NTLP on a number of initiatives to improve provision of TB care services.