Kata Chillag Chair of Public Health | Hamilton McKay Professor in Biosciences and Human Health

I joined the faculty of Davidson College in January 2020 after two and half years at Macalester College as the Hubert H. Humphrey Distinguished Visiting Professor of Global Health. Before Macalester, I spent my career in U.S. federal government. Reflected by my Ph.D. in medical anthropology and postdoctoral training in applied epidemiology and public health as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, I have long been interested in the perspectives and approaches of different disciplines, and the possibilities of interdisciplinary approaches to complex issues. I have worked on a variety of public health problems in my career, but throughout I have been most interested in their social, political, and ethical dimensions. At CDC, where I stayed for over 10 years, I was involved in polio eradication in Bangladesh, biomedical HIV research in the U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa, and in the Emergency Operations Center during the H1N1 influenza pandemic. After CDC, I worked on global HIV/AIDS policy and programs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As a senior policy analyst and then associate director of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, under President Barack Obama, my work included ethical issues in the 2014-2016 Ebola virus disease epidemic. I am currently leading a Greenwall Foundation funded project about the impact of immigration policy on health care in U.S. underserved areas. The research is focused on the critical role of international medical graduates in West Virginia, among the poorest and most underserved U.S. states, and where I was born.

Teaching

• The Epidemic Cinema Society: Public Health and Film
• Public Health Ethics
• Introduction to Global Health