2020 Queenan Global Health Awards

Pictured above (left to right): Drs. Cassandra Duffy, Beth Pineles, and Angela Stephens have been selected as the recipients of the 2020 Queenan Global Health Awards.

Cassandra Duffy, MD, MPH, a Maternal-Fetal Medicine attending at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is the recipient of the Seed Funding for Investigator-Initiated Research Projects for her research project “Effects of SARS-CoV-2 on pregnancy outcomes in a cohort of HIV-infected and uninfected women in Zambia.”

Under the mentorship of Dr. Donald Thea at Boston University School of Public Health and Dr. Blair Wylie at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dr. Duffy will conduct research to determine whether HIV infection affects SARS-CoV-2 prevalence in pregnancy and whether HIV modifies the impact of COVID-19 on pregnancy outcomes. This funding will enable Dr. Duffy to expand her skills as a clinical researcher while contributing to much-needed knowledge of an evolving public health crisis caused by a virus that is disproportionately affecting minority and marginalized communities.

Beth Pineles, MD, PhD, a second-year Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellow at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, is the recipient of the International Agency Mentored Research Fellowship. This Fellowship will support her interest in international maternal and perinatal health research and guideline development.

Dr. Pineles is particularly interested in helping to identify best obstetric techniques that can save lives and help women and babies in low-income countries that have the highest rates of maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. As an MFM and epidemiologist, she hopes to use her expertise and concern to improve maternal and child health throughout the world.

Angela J. Stephens, MD, a second-year Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellow at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, is the recipient of the Visiting Teaching Fellowship and will spend two months as a visiting faculty member at the Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda in May and June 2021.

Dr. Stephens will interact with their staff and physicians through lectures and presentations in high-risk obstetrics. Her core curriculum will focus on sepsis in the puerperium. She plans to incorporate her passion for providing education in resource-poor settings in order to decrease global health inequalities.

Learn more about the Queenan Fellowships for Global Health here.