Dr. Asevedo is a psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry of the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil, where he serves as medical director of the department’s hospital (CAISM – Vila Mariana). Dr. Asevedo received his medical degree from the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro School of Medicine and completed his psychiatry residency and Ph.D. at the Federal University of São Paulo. After working as a psychiatrist for the Brazilian Air Force, Dr. Asevedo participated in the implementation and directed for two years a public program to treat crack cocaine addiction in street populations in São Paulo. He has also studied the relationship between mental disorders and mechanisms of neuroplasticity and the understanding of early developmental trajectories of severe mental illness. In 2020, Dr. Asevedo founded an outpatient medical service for suicide prevention, Conversas de Vida – Centro de Promoção de Esperança e Prevenção de Suicídio.

His main interests are in developing strategies to improve identification, assessment, and care of individuals at risk for suicidal behavior and the implementation of public health policies targeting suicide prevention.

Since obtaining her doctoral degree, Dr. Bhargava has worked in positions involving clinical, research, teaching and administrative responsibilities in the departments of Psychiatry at Government Medical College and Hospital (in Chandigarh), Psychology in Delhi University and now Psychiatry and NDDTC at AIIMS. She has been engaged in earlier collaborative work around the WHO Quality of Life (WHOQOL) and has co-written grant applications, as well as received competitive grants for several projects. Recently, Dr. Bhargava was involved in a nation-wide survey on children with substance use, developed a Brief Intervention module to be used in school settings for children with substance use disorders, and was engaged in research to build capacity for counseling services.

As a GMH Scholar, Dr. Bhargava was involved in examining behavioral indicators in children and adolescents for Intellectual Disability Disorder in the ICD-11.

Dr. Joseph El-Khoury MD MSc PGCert. (EBPT), FRCPsych is a Consultant in Adult and Substance Misuse Psychiatry with over 12 years of psychiatric practice in the United Kingdom and Lebanon. He acts as the Scholar for the Arab region for the Global Mental Health Program at Columbia University since 2016.

After qualifying as a medical doctor in 2002 he trained in London and Oxford, obtaining Membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (MRCPsych) in 2006. He holds certification (CCT) in Adult and Substance Misuse Psychiatry since 2010 in addition to a Postgraduate Certificate in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy from the university of Reading.

Dr. El-Khoury was first appointed as a substantive consultant in the UK National Health Service in 2010. He currently holds an academic position as Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He is the founding director of the Psychosis Recovery Outreach Program (PROP) at AUBMC, the first community program for severe mental disorders in Lebanon. Dr. El-Khoury also directed the residency training program at AUBMC, one of the first ACGME-I (US) accredited programs in the Middle East from 2017 to 2021. Dr. El-Khoury has served on the executive committee member of the Lebanese Psychiatric Society since 2013 and is the current president elect. He was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrist in 2019 for his contribution to the field of mental health.

Dr. El-Khoury has over 35 academic publications on topics ranging from addiction, psychosis and conflict medicine. He holds a Masters (MSc) in War and Psychiatry from King’s College London with an emphasis on psychotrauma and violence in the Middle East.

Since February 2021, Dr. El-Khoury has taken up a new appointment as Chief of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at the American Hospital Dubai.

Dr. Lola Kola Ph.D, is a Mental Health Specialist and Global Mental Health researcher at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health, Department of Psychiatry College of Medicine University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Psychology, Lead City University, Ibadan, and an affiliate faculty at the BRiTE Center, Department of Psychiatry Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, United States. Lola has a background in clinical social work in a hospital setting. Her Global Mental Health research foundation consists of 3 overlapping work areas —Epidemiological studies, innovation clinical trials in primary care using the WHO Mental Health GAP guidelines, and implementation studies. Lola’s current work is centered around developing psychosocial interventions on digital platforms to increase mental health services access. She is working with colleagues at the BRiTE center and the University of Ghana on how to establish a West African Mental Health digital mental health alliance (WADMA).

Lola has an NIH Emerging Global Leader award, and she is active in global mental health discussions in an era of COVID-19. She is speaking out on the mental health implications of the pandemic, and the model that promotes the use of technology to scale up access to mental health services through expert panel discussions, publications (Kola et al., 2021; COVID-19 mental health impact and responses in low-income and middle-income countries) and appearance on media (BBC popular radio program “The Evidence”). She is on the Editorial Board of Lancet Psychiatry and a co-editor of the Psychiatric Services Global Column on health reforms.

Dr. Bulumko Lusu is a South African medical doctor and also holds postgraduate diploma in mental health. He completed his undergraduate medical training at the university of Stellenbosch in Cape Town, South Africa in 2008, and since has spent most of his time working in clinical psychiatry. In 2016, Dr. Lusu became a member of the research team at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he is currently enrolled as a Master’s student in the field of Psychiatry research.

His current research focus is the formulation and implementation of the field trials for the International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD11) in Cape Town, South Africa, for which he serves as South African Site Coordinator. He is also intimately involved with the psycho-social arm of the Drakenstein child health study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as with a UCT/Columbia University collaboration looking into the genomics of Schizophrenia in the local Xhosa population (the “SAX Study”). Dr. Lusu hopes to use this Global Mental Health Scholar opportunity as a platform on which to begin establishing meaningful collaboration relationships with scholars from other countries.

Dr. Onofa Lucky Umukoro (MB: BS, M.SC (Epidemiology), FWACP, MNIM) is Chief Consultant Psychiatrist and Director of Clinical Services at the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Aro, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria. He acquired clinical and academic competence through his training at the West African College of Physicians, the Clinical Programme in Rehabilitation & Community Psychiatry at East London NHS Trust, and through postgraduate research at the Department of Epidemiology & Medical Statistics of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

Dr. Onofa works in the General Adult, Rehabilitation, Primary Care, and Community Psychiatry Unit of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital. He was actively involved in the coordination, development, and roll-out of Aro Primary Care Mental Health Programme (APCMHP) for Ogun State, with a population of about 4 million. He is also actively involved in mental health teaching and training of medical students, resident doctors and other health professionals, and is a resource person to both the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria and the West African College of Physicians. Additionally, Dr. Onofa is an illustrator and presenter of research papers at several local and international conferences, having published in reputable peer-reviewed journals. He was Chairman, Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN), Aro Hospital Chapter, and a member of the faculty for implementation of the WHO field trials for the International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision in Nigeria.

As a GMH Scholar, Dr. Onofa was the Site Coordinator of the International ICD-11 Field Trials in Aro Hospital, one of the two study sites in Nigeria (Onofa et al, 2019). He also conducted a study titled: Impact of Training Health Workers on Depression Recognition and Treatment at the Primary Health Care Level in Ogun State, Nigeria. Dr. Onofa has also served as the Aro Hospital Site Supervisor for the Columbia University Global Practical Program for Master’s Students in Public Health who created database for Aro Primary Care Mental Health Programme.

Dr. Rao Ravindra Rao is a psychiatrist working in the area of substance use disorder. He is on the faculty of the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre (NDDTC) in the Department of Psychiatry of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), based in New Delhi, which is a tertiary level clinical, teaching, and research institute. Dr. Rao received his MD in Psychiatry from AIIMS, New Delhi.

After completing his senior residency at AIIMS, he worked for three years in the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), within in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the Government of India, where he managed the HIV prevention programs for injecting drug users. He then worked as a Technical Officer (Drugs and HIV) for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in the Regional Office for South Asia, before joining the faculty at AIIMS.

His interests are in the area of substance use disorders, and in particular, injecting drug use, harm reduction and community-based treatment programs. He is also interested in public health issues related to mental health and substance use.

Dr. Robbins is Associate Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University and completed his APA-approved clinical psychology internship at the University of Florida. Dr. Robbins brings his expertise in child and adult clinical neuropsychology, as well as individual, couples and group psychotherapy.

Drawing on his clinical work, Dr. Robbins has research and clinical expertise in neurocognitive, mental health, and psychosocial aspects of HIV disease in adults and adolescents both domestically and in low-and-middle income countries. He is interested in developing and testing technologically-based interventions that promote greater access to medical care and positive health outcomes among disadvantaged and vulnerable populations in resource limited settings. Dr. Robbins is the creator of an easy-to-use, highly automated tablet application to assess neuropsychological functioning and screen for neurocognitive impairment (NeuroScreen) that is being evaluating for use to detect impairment in perinatally HIV-infected adolescents in South Africa (R01 HD095256, PI: Robbins), Thailand (R21 HD098035; PI: Robbins) and Uganda (R01 TW011228, PI: Robbins), as well as among older adults with suspected dementia in South Africa (3R01 HD095256-03S2).

Over the past 13 years, Dr. Robbins has contributed to and completed numerous research projects examining neurocognitive functioning, mental health, sex and drug risk behaviors, and adherence to HIV medical treatment in HIV-infected, -affected and at-risk adolescents and adults. Furthermore, he has been at the forefront of developing and testing technology-based clinical tools and interventions for resource-limited settings. As the creator of the NeuroScreen app, Dr. Robbins hopes to make neurocognitive testing more accurate and more widely available to populations that typically cannot access these services. Furthermore, the NeuroScreen app may also make the assessment of neurocognitive functioning more widely available to researchers in low- and middle-income countries, as well as other resource limited settings.

Dr. Shah is a faculty member and Medical Director of the Parkinson’s Foundation Center of Excellence in the Movement Disorders Division of the Department of Neurology at the Neurological Institute at Columbia University Medical Center. She completed her undergraduate at MIT and her medical school training at Indiana University School of Medicine. She then went on to Columbia University Medical Center for her internship and Neurology residency and served as Chief Resident.

Following, she spent a year at the World Health Organization in Geneva working in the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse on public health aspects of Neurological illnesses, namely Dementia, Epilepsy and Headache. She is most interested in learning how to overcome barriers of stigma and discrimination to improve care access, specifically where mental health conditions overlap within the vulnerable individuals who also suffer from neurodegenerative disorders that are more common among the aging population, such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Goodman Sibeko is a medical doctor and a South African Medical Research Council-funded PhD student at the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where his research focus is on task shifting interventions for serious mental illness. Dr. Sibeko received his undergraduate medical training at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa.  After spending some time thoroughly enjoying a surgical rotation in rural KwaZulu-Natal, he returned to Durban to join the Psychiatry residency programme. It was the experience working on a randomized controlled trial with Prof. Dan Stein at University of Cape Town (UCT) that sparked his ongoing interest in research and led to his pursuing a PhD in Psychiatry.

While he is involved with genomics research and other psychosis research at UCT, his main area of interest is caregiver-administered interventions for mental illness. His research roles have included participant recruitment, instrument translation and development, staff recruitment and training, quality assurance, and oversight of team dynamics. He will be part of the implementation of the field trials for the International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD11) in Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Sibeko hopes that his membership in the Global Mental Health Scholars Program will help expand the reach of his work and facilitate new collaboration opportunities with colleagues from around the globe. 

Dr. Pal Singh Balhara is an Additional Professor of Psychiatry at the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre (NDDTC) and Department of Psychiatry of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi. Dr. Balhara received his MD in Psychiatry from AIIMS, New Delhi, in 2006. He then completed the International Masters of Mental Health Policy and Services program offered in collaboration by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.

Currently, he is involved in clinical service delivery in both inpatient and outpatient settings. In addition, he runs weekly clinics on dual diagnosis (comorbid substance use disorders and psychotic disorders) and behavioral addictions. Dr. Balhara’s interests are in psychiatry and substance use disorders, and his research has dealt with behavioral addictions, dual diagnosis, substance use disorders, and psychiatry training. Dr. Balhara has been involved in multi-national research projects, and has offered consultancy to organizations like WHO, UNODC and the Colombo Plan.

Dr. Stroup’s research focuses on the effectiveness of interventions and services for people with schizophrenia and related disorders. He was co-principal investigator of the Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) schizophrenia study and led several clinical trials as principal investigator of the NIMH-sponsored Schizophrenia Trials Network. He currently leads an NIMH-sponsored research center “Optimizing and Personalizing Interventions for Schizophrenia Across the Lifespan.” He works with the New York State Office of Mental Health to disseminate evidence-based practices.