Global Health Communications Speakers

Peter Hotez, MD, PhD

Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D. is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology &Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine where he is also the director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics. He is also University Professor at Baylor University, Fellow in Disease and Poverty at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University, Faculty Fellow with the Hagler Institute for Advanced Studies at Texas A&M University, and Health Policy Scholar in the Baylor Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy.Dr. Hotez is an internationally-recognized physician-scientist in neglected tropical diseases and vaccine development. As head of the Texas Children’s CVD, he leads a team and product development partnership for developing new vaccines for hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and SARS/MERS/SARS-2 coronavirus, diseases affecting hundreds of millions of children and adults worldwide, while championing access to vaccines globally and in the United States. In2006 at the Clinton Global Initiative he co-founded the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases to provide access to essential medicines for hundreds of millions of people

Barbara Gastel, MD, MPH

Barbara Gastel coordinates the graduate program in science and technology journalism at Texas A&M University, where she is professor of integrative biosciences, humanities in medicine, and biotechnology. Dr. Gastel earned a BA from Yale and an MD and an MPH from Johns Hopkins. After medical school, she did an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) mass media fellowship at Newsweek. She then worked in communication and administration at the National Institutes of Health. She also has taught science writing at MIT and served as assistant dean for teaching at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. Dr. Gastel’s international experience includes serving as visiting professor of technical communication for two years at what is now Peking University Health Science Center. She also has directed the US aspect of a program to teach English-language biomedical writing and editing at multiple institutions in China and other Asian countries, and she has held lead roles in AuthorAID, a project to help researchers in developing countries to write about and publish their work. Over the years she has given workshops on medical and scientific writing in many countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. She is lead author of the current (8th) edition of How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper.

Natacha Poggio, MFA

Natacha Poggio is a social impact design educator and advocate of design for social change. She is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Houston-Downtown, in Texas, where she connects the role nature plays in people’s lives to inspire students to be more socially responsible citizens of the world. Prior to UHD, she taught at Lamar University (Beaumont, Texas) and the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford (Connecticut). In 2008, Natacha founded Design Global Change, a creative collaborative of designers contributing solutions to the challenges facing society. With over two decades of professional practice, Natacha focuses on designing human-centered solutions to address problems in global health, sustainability, and social justice. Her work has reached hundreds of communities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and also has garnered recognition, most notably as a two-time recipient of the prestigious Sappi “Ideas that Matter” award.