COVID-19 caught most of the world by surprise. In this highly interactive session, participants will meet the creators and implementers of participatory surveillance systems that are engaging directly with communities to help identify potential disease outbreaks faster in some of the ‘hottest’ spots on the planet for the emergence of novel infections, including Brazil, Thailand, Cambodia, Tanzania, and South Africa.
The session will offer the opportunity for everyone, whether you are a social entrepreneur, healthcare worker, philanthropist, corporate leader, or NGO staff, to learn about participatory surveillance and share their ideas for expanding this approach to new communities.
This session was curated in partnership with Ending Pandemics.
DVM and Associate Professor, Chiang Mai University
Dr. Terdsak Yano is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Food Animal Clinics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. He earned DVM and MS from Chiang Mai University in 2004 and 2010, respectively. His major responsibility is teaching and research in Swine clinic. He teaches 3 swine classes, including Swine diseases, Swine clinical rotation and Swine clinical clerkship. These classes provide for 5th and 6th veterinary students. His interests are Swine practice, Epidemiology, Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and GIS in Veterinary Scinces. He did the research about pig health and epidemiology, especially Foot and Mouth Disease. Previously, he and his colleagues in the faculty ran the research about FMD in many aspects such as risk factors, the outbreak of FMD in Northern Thailand and vaccine efficacy. He also performed the research about how to control Streptococcus suis infection in pig and human in Northern Thailand
he was one of researchers who created PODD system. It is a Participatory Animal Health Digital Surveillance system, that focus on animal and human health surveillance by using digital technology and One-health approach. Nowadays, that system is manipulated under the PODD center, Chiang Mai University Thailand.
Faculty, Veterinary Medicine, Chiang Mai University
My name is Sakulrat Pattamakaew, a veterinarian working for PODD Centre, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. With the passion of establishing community owned one health surveillance system and developing a digital disease detection platform, the PODD Centre was established in 2020 which derived from the Participatory One Health Digital Disease Detection (PODD) Project granted by Skoll Global Threats Fund since 2014.
I responsible for the communication and implementation of this one health surveillance system into relevant local organizations, providing workshops and training materials for general publics, and coordination the working of multisectoral agencies to achieve a goal.
Before joining PODD Project in August 2014, I served as Technical Advisor for Novartis (Thailand) Limited in Animal Health Business Unit where I was instrumental in collaboration and partnership with multilevel approach to Charoen Pokphand Group (CP) customers during a three-year period.
I hold a master’s degree in public health from School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, and a bachelor’s degree in veterinary medicine from Chiang Mai University.
Onicio Leal-Neto brings 12 years of experience in digital epidemiology and technologies applied to disease surveillance. He has worked for local governments in Brazil and several international organizations as consultant (Pan-American Health Organization, UNICEF, Inter-American Development Bank).
He led Participatory Disease Surveillance projects during the FIFA World Cup 2014 and Olympics 2016 and co-hosted important events like Epicrowd 2015 and Epihack Rio 2015. During Covid-19 pandemic, he was the chairman of Brasil Sem Corona, the biggest participatory disease surveillance strategy in Brazil. He was a project partner of the SURPRISE study, the first participatory disease surveillance approach for healthcare workers in 25 hospitals in Switzerland.
Onicio holds a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences, a Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Public Health & Epidemiology. He is a senior researcher at Computer Science department, ETH Zurich.
Nomita Divi oversees the implementation of a highly evolving work plan and manages the team. Nomita brings expertise in stakeholder engagement, management, needs assessment, and program planning. Nomita developed a portfolio of projects while serving as Program Officer on the Ending Pandemics team at the Skoll Global Threats Fund, including network-building in South Asia, crowdsourcing epidemics intelligence for verification of outbreaks through EpiCore, and formulating creative opportunities to engage with technologists. Nomita spent eight years at Stanford University managing health policy programs and running a fellowship. Before her time at Stanford, she worked at Massachusetts General Hospital, managing the application of a global HIV simulation model in India, South Africa, Cote d’Ivore, and the Caribbean.
Nomita holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Ottawa, Canada as well as a Masters of Science in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Mark Smolinski, MD, MPH, brings 25 years of experience in applying innovative solutions to improve disease prevention, response, and control across the globe. Mark is leading a well-knit team—bringing together technologists; human, animal, and environmental health experts; and key community stakeholders to co-create tools for early detection, advanced warning, and prevention of pandemic threats. Community health workers, village volunteers, farmers, and interested public citizens in Albania, Brazil, Cambodia, Europe, Laos, Myanmar, Tanzania, Thailand, and the United States are among those using their own solutions to address pressing local needs. Since 2009, Mark has served as the Chief Medical Officer and Director of Global Health at the Skoll Global Threats Fund (SGTF), where he developed the Ending Pandemics in Our Lifetime Initiative in 2012. His work at SGTF created a solid foundation for the work of Ending Pandemics, which branched out as an independent entity on January 1, 2018.
Prior to SGTF, Mark developed the Predict and Prevent Initiative at Google.org, as part of the starting team at Google’s philanthropic arm. Working with a team of engineers, Google Flu Trends (a project that had tremendous impact on the use of big data for disease surveillance) was created in partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Mark has served as Vice President for Biological Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a public charity directed by CNN founder Ted Turner and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. Before NTI, he led an 18-member expert committee of the National Academy of Medicine on the 2003 landmark report “Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response.” Mark served as the sixth Luther Terry Fellow in Washington, D.C., in the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General and as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gustav Praekelt is a founder based in Africa. He builds and supports organisations that use technology to empower people.
In 2003, he founded Praekelt Consulting, (now Helm Africa), a for-profit designing digital products and services to help Africa’s biggest brands turn complex customer journeys into simple experiences.
His belief in the power of mobile phones to transform lives inspired him to establish the Praekelt Foundation in 2006 - which imagines a world in which personal, uninterrupted healthcare is available to everyone. Praekelt.org (Now Reach Digital Health) has been at the forefront of digital health, being involved involved in the early use of mobile technology in HIV treatment, Maternal and Child health and more recently, helping governments and iNGOS respond to the COVID pandemic in the global south.
In 2018, Gustav established Turn.io, a platform that enables social impact organisations have personal, guided conversations to improve lives at global scale.
Chuck Slaughter is the founder of TravelSmith and Living Goods, is a managing Director of The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and a Senior Advisor to TPG’s Rise Fund, a $5 billion impact investing platform. Chuck earned a BA and Masters in Public and Private Management from Yale. In 1991 he founded TravelSmith, a leading travel gear company, and grew it to over $100 million in catalog and online sales. As an advisor to several private equity funds, he has participated in the acquisition of over $2 billion in consumer businesses. As its pro-bono president Chuck lead the turnaround of a network of clinics serving the poor in Kenya. This inspired him to create Living Goods, which supports government community health workers who provide health care on call delivered to the doorsteps of over 8 million people. Living Goods Smart Health app automates diagnoses, enables managers to optimize the performance of thousands of health workers in in remote villages, and provides real-time, auditable data to health ministries and funders. A RCT shows this approach is reducing child mortality by over 25%, for less than $3 per capita. LG’s is helping partners replicate the model in Uganda, Kenya Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia. Chuck serves on the boards of Yale’s School of Management, Tidepool, Digital Square, Aspen Management Partners, PATH’s Digital Advisory Board, and was previously the Vice Chair of the Initiative for Global Development (Co-founded by Bill Gates Sr). He received a Skoll Award, an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, a Draper Richards Fellowship, and is a World Economic Forum Social Entrepreneur of the Year.
Regional Lead, Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters
Channé Suy Lan, has 12 years of experience in co-designing and launching innovative initiatives to improve public health, education and social justice for communities in Southeast Asia, with her main focus being Cambodia.
As the Regional Director of InSTEDD and leader of iLab Southeast Asia, a technology-based NGO, Channé has worked on digital disease detection in the Mekong Basin Region, in partnership with the Ministries of Health of the countries. Channé initiated the ICT4D Solution Incubator Program for Cambodia to empower development actors to strategically, and effectively integrate ICTs in social programs to maximize the reach to community and social impact.
In addition leading the iLab, Channé also served as an Advisory Council Member, Principles for Digital Development at Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) at the United Nation Foundation. Channé was also an advisory board member for mHealth research study of the University of Washington as well as an advisory board of Impact Hub Phnom Penh and an advisory board member for USAID project - Development Innovation.
Channé graduated with a Masters Degree in Computer Application from Bangalore University, India, Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Norton University in Cambodia, and she is a fellow in the Equity Initiative.
