Announcing Dr. Kasia Kordas as New Co-Director for the Community for Global Health Equity

Published August 15, 2018 This content is archived.

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Dr. Kordas has enthusiastically supported the growth of CGHE, crediting the Community as another academic home full of like-minded individuals.

This fall, Dr. Pavani Ram will be rotating out of her role as founding Co-Director for the Community of Excellence in Global Health Equity (CGHE). UB has greatly benefited from Dr. Ram’s passion for promoting health equity – but it is her human decency that has, to a significant degree, shaped CGHE. Having set the Community into motion – encouraging faculty to work globally, sometimes out of their comfort zones; connecting UB faculty with influential leaders around the world; and launching innovative educational programs – Dr. Ram will now focus on her research. Thank you, Dr. Ram, for your grit, focus, and good heart. 

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Kasia Kordas, associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health, will join Dr. Korydon Smith as Co-Director for CGHE. Dr. Kordas joined the University at Buffalo in 2016. With training in international health from Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Kordas has worked at prestigious universities like the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health, Pennsylvania State University, and most recently the University of Bristol in the UK. Dr. Kordas’ research program integrates nutrition, environmental health, and epidemiology to understand the multifactorial environmental influences on child growth and development in global settings.

Dr. Kordas has enthusiastically supported the growth of CGHE, crediting the Community as another academic home full of like-minded individuals. Her engagement has included co-organizing the 2017 Global Health Day and Air Quality Ideas Lab, events that sought to increase research capacity at UB and co-leading the CGHE Early Life Exposome Big Ideas team. In this leadership position, Dr. Kordas collaborates with a multidisciplinary team of scholars to understand how to measure the totality of environmental exposures among young children and investigates the complex exposures on children’s growth, development, and health. Her collaborations with UB researchers from engineering, chemistry, geography, and biostatistics, as well as researchers at other institutions, have contributed to the expansion of her exposure research, particularly in a research program she leads in Uruguay.

Dr. Kordas is invested in training and mentoring the next generation of global health leaders. Since she began her role at UB, she has developed a program in the School of Public Health and Health Professions  to support postdoctoral fellow professional training and networking experiences. She notes that CGHE, as a center for inclusive, equity-driven, cross-sectoral thought and action, is a welcome antithesis to siloed ideas, fragmented interventions, and paternalistic approaches to improving health and wellbeing for populations around the world. She is eager to leverage the existing strengths in global health scholarship, teaching, and research, as possible training tools and sites for students and postdocs. There is no doubt that Dr. Kordas' investment in this Community will develop partnerships that enrich global health scholarship and education at UB. 

To contact Dr. Kordas, please email her at kkordas@buffalo.edu.

Dr. Kasia Kordas.

Dr. Kasia Kordas, Co-Director, Community for Global Health Equity

Dr. Pavani Ram.

Dr. Pavani Ram, Founding Co-Director, Community for Global Health Equity