Strep A Burden of Disease Working Group

Professor Michael Baker is a public health physician, epidemiologist, researcher, and science communicator based in the Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington.  

He has a long-term research focus on rheumatic fever and Streptococcal disease which has included surveillance, descriptive epidemiological studies, aetiological studies (case-control, record linkage), intervention evaluations, burden of disease analyses, and research syntheses.  

He leads the Health Protection Aotearoa Research Centre (HPARC) which focuses on infectious diseases and environmental health. The group has active research projects in these areas, including  rheumatic fever, respiratory infections, and improving infectious disease surveillance.

Michael took a leading role in shaping New Zealand’s Covid-19 pandemic response, particularly the elimination strategy.  He was a member of the Government’s Covid-19 Technical Advisory Group throughout the pandemic. 
Michael has a strong interest in science communication and evidence translation and is the inaugural director of the Public Health Communications Centre Aotearoa (PHCC), which he established in February 2023. 

Andrea Beaton is a Professor of Pediatrics and Pediatric Cardiologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. She is a founding member of the Rheumatic Heart Disease Research Collaborative in Uganda (RRCUganda.org), where she spearheads initiatives to combat rheumatic heart disease on a global scale.

Dr. Beaton holds leadership positions with the American Heart Association, the World Heart Federation, and the World Health Organization, where she serves as Co-Chair of the RHD Guideline Development Group. Her work is supported by a remarkable network of mentors and collaborators dedicated to the shared mission of eliminating RHD. Dr. Beaton lives in the US with her four children and her extraordinary husband, who inspire her commitment to making the world a healthier and more equitable place for all. 

Professor Asha Bowen OAM is a clinician scientist working across the Perth Children’s Hospital as a paediatric infectious disease specialist and The Kids Research Institute Australia (formerly Telethon Kids Institute) as Head of the Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention Team.  
Asha has more than 15 years’ experience leading infectious diseases research and investigator-initiated clinical trials focused on issues significant to Aboriginal child health and ARF prevention. Asha focuses on primordial and primary prevention of Strep A related diseases through a comprehensive healthy skin program and exploring new opportunities for prevention through early diagnosis at the point of care. 

Dr Jeffrey Cannon is a senior health economist and researcher at The Kids Research Institute Australia. His research focuses on understanding the interactions between health, economic, and social values and developing and applying analytic models to facilitate policy decisions.

He earned a PhD in Health Economics from the University of Western Australia in 2019 and previously received an Honours degree in Mathematics after a BSc (Mathematics) and BBus (Finance) dual degree. Dr Cannon’s PhD thesis included the first-ever estimates for the health and economic burdens of all major group A Streptococcal (Strep A) clinical manifestations and the potential value of vaccines in Australia. Following his PhD, Dr Cannon took up a post-doctoral position at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston during 2019-2022, where he was a scientific lead in developing a Full Value of Vaccines Assessment for Strep A vaccination globally. 

Dr Thomas Cherian is a Managing Partner at MMGH Consulting, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Before this, he worked at WHO in Geneva for 17 years, where he served as the Coordinator for the Expanded Programme on Immunization and before that as the Coordinator for Implementation Research in the Initiative for Vaccine Research. He also holds the position of Senior Associate in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA.  
Before joining WHO, Dr. Cherian was a Professor of Paediatrics at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, where he did his medical and postgraduate training in paediatrics. Subsequently, he did a 3-year fellowship in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore.

Dr. Cherian has authored or co-authored over 170 scientific articles and book chapters. His main research interests have been related to acute respiratory infections in children. His research has contributed to the case management protocols for acute respiratory infections in children and to policy development for the use of Pneumococcal and Hib vaccines worldwide. During his tenure as the EPI Coordinator at WHO, he oversaw the rollout of new vaccines in low- and middle-income countries and the measurement of their impact. He established the WHO sentinel site surveillance network for invasive bacterial infections and diarrhoeal diseases.

Through MMGH Consulting, Dr. Cherian continues to support multi-national agencies, including WHO, UNICEF, and Gavi with immunization policy, strategy, programme implementation and evaluation. 

Professor Mark E Engel is a researcher based in the SA Cochrane Centre, SA Medical Research Council, South Africa, where he serves as the unit director.  Initially a medical laboratory scientist, he was later a Harvard University fellow in Public Health in 2001, before pursuing a career in epidemiology. Following completion of his MPH degree, he was awarded a PhD from UCT in 2013 for a large longitudinal study on the epidemiology of RHD in Cape Town children.

Prof Engel networks with African colleagues to apply a wide range of investigative approaches, from molecular to population-based research to all aspects of Rheumatic Heart Disease. In 2016, he established the AFROStrep Study, in efforts to improve the understanding of the role of group A streptococcus in RHD development and inform putative vaccines under development. His work, supported over the years by the SA National Research Foundation, the SA Medical Research Council, the American Heart Association and NIH in the USA, has been presented both nationally and internationally. He has an excellent academic record, teaching health research methods and having successfully supervised to completion, a number of students undertaking MPH, MSc and PhD degrees. Finally, Prof Engel is a member of the African Union/Pan-African Societies of Cardiology Education Taskforce and the Acute Rheumatic Fever (ARC) Diagnostic Network. 

Dr Theresa Lamagni is a Section Head Healthcare-Associated Infection & Antimicrobial Resistance Division of the UK Health Security Agency and designated epidemiologist for the WHO Collaborating Centre for Streptococcal Diseases in London. She has worked in public health for over 25 years. During this time she completed an MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a PhD on the epidemiology of invasive GAS infections in Europe at the University of Helsinki.  Theresa has strategic responsibility for the national surveillance of streptococcal diseases, providing expert support to outbreak and incident response and contributing to the development of an evidence base to inform disease prevention programmes. She has authored over 180 peer-review papers, 4 clinical microbiology book chapters and 4 national public health guidelines and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. 

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A/Prof Hannah Moore OAM is an infectious disease epidemiologist; Co-Head of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology team within the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases at The Kids Research Institute Australia and Associate Professor at the School of Population Health, Curtin University in Western Australia.

Her passion for research involves using population-based data to investigate how to recognise, prevent and reduce serious respiratory and other infectious diseases in children through estimating burden of disease and evaluating the effectiveness of vaccination programs. She has developed expertise in the epidemiology of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) in young children, where her research was pivotal in WA Governments’ decision to establish the first and most comprehensive RSV infant immunisation program in the nation. Raising awareness of RSV, understanding community burden and evaluating the impact of prevention measures is now a major focus of her research program. She has previously contributed to state and national influenza vaccination policy.  
In 2020 A/Prof Moore joined the Strep A Vaccine Global Consortium (SAVAC) to increase knowledge and awareness of the global burden of Group A Streptococcal diseases. She now holds an activity lead position in the US$11M-funded SAVAC 2.0.

A/Prof Moore has been awarded >$19M in competitive research grants, co-authored >140 papers, was TEDxPerth 2018 speaker, recipient of a WA Young Tall Poppy Award (2013) and the WA Premiers Science Early Career Scientist Award (2015). In 2024, she was honoured with a Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to epidemiology as a researcher.

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Dr Jean‑Marc Ségalin is a public health physician and infectious diseases specialist currently leading the RHD Centre as Directorate of Health of French Polynesia. Since taking on the role in 2020, he has led efforts to strengthen RHD prevention, screening, surveillance, and community awareness programs across the Pacific region. He has also contributed to regional and international collaborations focused on rheumatic fever and Strep A prevention in Pacific populations.

His current work focuses on reducing the burden of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease through echocardiographic screening, public education campaigns, and strengthening early diagnosis and treatment pathways for Strep A infections. Dr Ségalin is involved in fostering international Pacific collaborations to improve research, prevention strategies, and long-term control of RHD in endemic settings.

Dr. Sima Tokajian is a Professor of Microbial Genomics at the Lebanese American University. Her research integrates genomics, metagenomics, bioinformatics, and bacteriology to study human microbial pathogens, with a focus on antimicrobial resistance, pathogen evolution, and molecular epidemiology. She has led investigations on high-priority bacteria such as Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter cloacae complex, as well as national efforts in SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance in Lebanon. Dr. Tokajian plays an active role in regional and international collaborations, serves on multiple academic and institutional committees, and is committed to mentoring graduate students and expanding genomic research capacity across the Middle East. 

Dr. Brian Wahl is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Wahl has worked for almost twenty years to advance the prevention and control of infectious diseases, focusing on low- and middle-income countries. His primary research areas include a broad range of vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae type b, and Bordetella pertussis.

Dr. Wahl leads field studies and uses modeling to address questions about infectious disease control performance, optimization, and equity. He is also passionate about strengthening public health research and epidemiology competencies among health professionals in various settings, including India and Nepal. Before joining Yale University, Dr. Wahl was a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

David Watkins is an Associate Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. He studies health system reform and policy implementation challenges, with a particular emphasis on non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries. Much of his work uses rheumatic heart disease as a tracer condition for non-communicable diseases more broadly. His research team works in three thematic areas: (1) population and economic modeling to support policy analysis, (2) integrated healthcare delivery, and (3) use of evidence in policy formulation. His work has been featured in several high-impact journals, and has been an advisor to, or member of, numerous international committees, task forces, commissions, and working groups related to global health policy and systems. He also continues to practice as an internal medicine specialist at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. He received a bachelor of science from Rhodes College and a doctor of medicine from Duke University before moving to Seattle, where he completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Washington, an MPH through the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and a research fellowship in health economics with the Disease Control Priorities Network. 

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