Project Advisory Group

Atsuyoshi Ishizumi
Atsuyoshi Ishizumi is a fellow on the Demand for Immunization Team at US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He has been involved in a number of research and implementation projects for improving vaccine confidence and demand globally. Currently, he is supporting an infodemic management project in Indonesia, coordinating behavioural assessments and intervention development in collaboration with in-country partners. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was deployed to a team responding to outbreaks on international cruise ships. Before entering the world o public health, he worked in the commercial marketing industry where he conducted various communications projects for pharmaceutical companies.

Barbara Pahud
Dr. Pahud is the Director of Research for the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas. Dr. Pahud’s research focuses on clinical trials, vaccine safety, immunization implementation, vaccine education, and promotion of research in underserved areas. Her most recent investigator-initiated project includes creation of the Collaboration for Vaccine Education and Research (CoVER) that has developed and implemented a vaccine education curriculum for pediatric and family medicine residency programs across the country. She serves as an advisory board member for the advisory committee for childhood vaccines (ACCV) that advises and makes recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Elisabeth Wilhelm
Elisabeth Wilhelm is a Health Communications Specialist in the US CDC Global Immunization Division on a team of behavioral scientists to diagnose and address vaccine demand and acceptance issues, especially supporting the needs of low and middle-income countries. She is focused on crisis communication following vaccine related events, vaccine safety communication, evidence-based behavior change communication strategy development and infodemic management, especially related to misinformation about immunization in the digital environment. Elisabeth has been involved in health research and evaluation efforts in ten countries and regularly designs and conducts trainings on communication and vaccine demand topics including STOP training on demand and communications.

Hardeep S. Sandhu
Dr. Hardeep Singh Sandhu has over 34 years of experience working in public health in countries in Americas, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Pacific. He is a medical epidemiologist and a public health physician, with expertise in preventive medicine, immunization, communicable disease control, polio eradication, measles and rubella elimination, Japanese encephalitis control, disease surveillance, workforce development, and management and evaluation of public health programs. He is working with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the last 19 years. Hardeep has an MBBS and MD from India and has done fellowship with CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS).

John Parrish-Sprowl
Dr John Parrish-Sprowl currently serves as the Director of the Global Health Communication Center (GHCC) of the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts as well as Professor of Communication Studies and adjunct professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. An award-winning educator and consultant, Dr Parrish-Sprowl is known for his international applied communication research and project consultancies. Within the past few years Dr Parrish-Sprowl has worked with WHO in the areas of risk communication, radiation emergency response guidelines, and the development of communication capacity related to influenza vaccine uptake and served as a member of WHO Roster of Experts in Social and Behavioural Change.

Lois Privor-Dumm
Lois Privor-Dumm is Senior Advisor, Policy, Advocacy & Communications at the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She brings more than 20 years’ experience in advocating for health programs and new vaccine introductions in various geographies across the globe. She currently works on COVID-19 vaccine policy and advocacy to build trust and confidence in the value of vaccines and vaccination and bring attention to the value of public health interventions and vaccines that could help sustain the progress in child health and improve the health of communities in the face of COVID-19.

Margie Danchin
Margie is a consultant paediatrician at the Royal Childrens Hospital and an Associate Professor and Clinician Scientist, University of Melbourne and Murdoch Childrens Research Institute (MCRI). As leader of the Vaccine Uptake Group, MCRI, her research focuses mainly on vaccine confidence, acceptance and uptake, particularly amongst high risk-groups and in low and middle-income countries. In Australia, she is the chair of the Collaboration on Social Science in Immunisation (COSSI) Group, chair of the Social Science Advisory Board and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee, National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) and on the COVID-19 ATAGI working group. Internationally, she is a member of Sabin’s Vaccine and Acceptance Research Network (VARN) steering group and the IPA-Vaccine Trust Project.

Noni MacDonald
Dr. Noni MacDonald is a Professor of Paediatrics (Infectious Diseases) at Dalhousie University and the IWK Health Centre in Halifax Canada and a former Dean of Medicine at Dalhousie University. She has long been recognized in Canada and internationally, as an advocate for children and youth health and as a leader in paediatric infectious disease and global health. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Order of Nova Scotia. She has been a member of SAGE (the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on immunization for WHO) since 2017.

Philip Weiss
Author of 'Hyperthinking', Phil Weiss is an entrepreneur and strategic thinker who has been working with leading corporations for the past two decades. For the past decade he has been working on healthcare communication, social media and vaccines exploring the impact of the anti-vaxx on social media. He has trained doctors, ;launched initiatives and only counter anti-vaxx projects. He founded ZN (www.znconsulting.com) a leading digital agency in Brussels working with companies, political institutions like the European Commission and Parliament and organisations on how to use the Internet to integrate and transform business and communication. He works with such household names as Toyota, Microsoft, Sony, Sanofi Pasteur, UCB and various industry associations.

Robb Butler
Dr Robb Butler is a social scientist and public health promotion advisor with over 25 years international working experience in public health, social protection and humanitarian assistance in developing and transitional states. Robb’s specialist areas of experience and knowledge include behavioural/community insight methodology and social science interventions for public health. He spearheaded WHO’s efforts to strengthen childhood immunization demand promotion to countries in the WHO European Region. He also represented WHO globally on tackling vaccine hesitancy and delivering normative guidance for promoting vaccination. He went on to manage the vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programme at WHO/Europe, where he currently serves as an Executive Director.

Robin Nandy
Dr Robin Nandy was appointed Principal Adviser and Chief of Immunization at UNICEF Headquarters in December 2015. Prior to this, from 2011-2015, he was the Chief of Child Survival and Development in UNICEF Indonesia. Dr Nandy also led the Global polio Eradication Initiative at UNICEF Headquarters from 2010-2011 and was team lead for Health in Emergencies from 2006-2011. Dr Nandy is a medical epidemiologist and public health physician with an extensive background in international public health, particularly in the areas of child survival, immunization, outbreak response and in humanitarian health response. He has worked in several conflict affected countries and fragile states and also participated in a number of high-profile emergency responses.

Suleman Malik
A global social change leader, Suleman Malik is C4D Specialist at the UNICEF HQs with focus on Immunization and Workforce/Institutional Building. With more than two decades of experience in leadership roles, he has initiated and implemented successful communication and learning initiatives on social issues globally. He led UNICEF C4D teams in Pakistan, Malawi and Kenya before joining the HQs from his post as Chief of C4D in Myanmar. A leading expert in social change programming, he has been instrumental in designing, executing and monitoring polio and immunization. As a global lead, he provides technical leadership to demand for immunization programming. This work spans 180 countries around the globe. He has supported the polio transition planning process for each region and country where polio program resources were present.

Tina Purnat
Tina Purnat is a Technical Officer for Digital Health Technologies in the newly established Department of Digital Health and Innovation at WHO. As part of the WHO COVID-19 response, she works in WHO infodemic response: collaborations to develop tools, methods and insights to promote evidence-based interventions to bring about behavior change, and to curb the harmful effects of mis- and disinformation affecting communities and individuals. Tina has worked at the intersection of health research, analysis and policy-making with an emphasis on health information analysis and health information systems. She later worked at WHO and University of Munich as an analyst in clinical trials and implementation research studies in LMICs.

Zulfiqar A. Bhutta
Dr. Zulfiqar A. Bhutta is the Founding Director of the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health at the Aga Khan University; the Inaugural Robert Harding Chair in Global Child Health & Co-Director of the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health; and Chairman of The Coalition of Centers in Global Child Health with adjunct professorships at several Schools of Public Health including Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, Tufts University, the University of Alberta and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Dr. Bhutta leads large research groups in Toronto, Karachi and Nairobi with a special interest in research synthesis, scaling up evidence-based community setting interventions, and implementation of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health interventions in the context of humanitarian settings.