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Grace Chan, MD, MPH, PhD

Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology

Grace Chan is an epidemiologist and pediatrician, with expertise in maternal and child health. Her work focuses on the development of health and disease over the life course, using research to develop and implement sustainable clinical and public health interventions. As a perinatal and pediatric epidemiologist, Dr. Chan has led international collaborations with the World Health Organization and Save the Children. She serves on the technical advisory group with the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia.

Dr. Chan is a co-founder of HaSET, a global health and social justice NGO for mothers and children. She is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at HMS and a practicing physician in the Division of Medical Critical Care at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is also an honorary faculty member at St Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Chan is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School and trained in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center. She earned her PhD as an NIH Clinical Research Scholar from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, completing a post-doctoral fellowship at ICDDR,B in Bangladesh. Dr. Chan has trained health care workers, researchers and policy makers in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia; and mentored many talented students and fellows.

Affiliation:

Boston Children's Hopital

Dr. Chan’s research focuses on improving maternal and child health by using epidemiologic methods to discover and deliver evidence-based interventions. In collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and Save the Children, she developed and tested models to scale up kangaroo mother care, an evidence-based intervention that reduces mortality among preterm and low birth weight babies up to 40%. These findings have influenced the recent global WHO guidelines on the care of preterm and low birth weight infants. Dr. Chan conducted a large-scale cohort study with 29,000 pregnant women and their newborns in seven low- and lower middle-income countries to determine the epidemiology and patterns of antimicrobial resistance of neonatal sepsis. Results demonstrated that over 90% of neonatal sepsis isolates were resistant to first-line antibiotics, which contributed to global and national programs on infection prevention and targeted antibiotic therapy.

Dr. Chan currently leads several large Gates-funded studies that focus on estimating the morbidity and mortality of women and young children in regions of the world like Ethiopia where reliable data and resources are limited. Through these studies, she is improving estimates of maternal and child health disease through surveillance in a rural field site of 80,000 and nested pregnancy and birth cohort, developing risk prediction models for adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes, and building research capacity of future generations.

Factors associated with small-for-gestational-age births among preterm babies born <2000 g: a multifacility cross-sectional study in Ethiopia.
Authors: Authors: Debere MK, Haile Mariam D, Ali A, Mekasha A, Chan GJ.
BMJ Open
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Antibiotic resistance genes in the gut microbiota of mothers and linked neonates with or without sepsis from low- and middle-income countries.
Authors: Authors: Carvalho MJ, Sands K, Thomson K, Portal E, Mathias J, Milton R, Gillespie D, Dyer C, Akpulu C, Boostrom I, Hogan P, Saif H, Ferreira A, Nieto M, Hender T, Hood K, Andrews R, Watkins WJ, Hassan B, Chan G, Bekele D, Solomon S, Metaferia G, Basu S, Naha S, Sinha A, Chakravorty P, Mukherjee S, Iregbu K, Modibbo F, Uwaezuoke S, Audu L, Edwin CP, Yusuf AH, Adeleye A, Mukkadas AS, Zahra R, Shirazi H, Muhammad A, Ullah SN, Jan MH, Akif S, Mazarati JB, Rucogoza A, Gaju L, Mehtar S, Bulabula ANH, Whitelaw A, Roberts L, Walsh TR.
Nat Microbiol
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Incremental costs of scaling up kangaroo mother care: Results from implementation research in Ethiopia and India.
Authors:
Acta Paediatr
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Characterisation of Staphylococci species from neonatal blood cultures in low- and middle-income countries.
Authors: Authors: Sands K, Carvalho MJ, Spiller OB, Portal EAR, Thomson K, Watkins WJ, Mathias J, Dyer C, Akpulu C, Andrews R, Ferreira A, Hender T, Milton R, Nieto M, Zahra R, Shirazi H, Muhammad A, Akif S, Jan MH, Iregbu K, Modibbo F, Uwaezuoke S, Chan GJ, Bekele D, Solomon S, Basu S, Nandy RK, Naha S, Mazarati JB, Rucogoza A, Gaju L, Mehtar S, Bulabula ANH, Whitelaw A, Walsh TR.
BMC Infect Dis
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Implementation science to design, test and scale up effective Kangaroo Mother Care in Oromia region, Ethiopia.
Authors: Authors: Estifanos AS, Haile Mariam D, Fikre A, Kote M, Tariku A, Chan GJ.
Acta Paediatr
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Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on utilisation of facility-based essential maternal and child health services from March to August 2020 compared with pre-pandemic March-August 2019: a mixed-methods study in North Shewa Zone, Ethiopia.
Authors: Authors: Bekele C, Bekele D, Hunegnaw BM, Van Wickle K, Gebremeskel FA, Korte M, Tedijanto C, Taddesse L, Chan GJ.
BMJ Open
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Estimates of Stillbirths, Neonatal Mortality, and Medically Vulnerable Live Births in Amhara, Ethiopia.
Authors: Authors: Chan GJ, Goddard FGB, Hunegnaw BM, Mohammed Y, Hunegnaw M, Haneuse S, Bekele C, Bekele D.
JAMA Netw Open
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Cohort Profile: The Birhan Health and Demographic Surveillance System.
Authors: Authors: Bekele D, Hunegnaw BM, Bekele C, Van Wickle K, Tadesse F, Goddard FGB, Mohammed Y, Unninayar S, Chan GJ.
Int J Epidemiol
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Neonatal sepsis and mortality in low-income and middle-income countries from a facility-based birth cohort: an international multisite prospective observational study.
Authors: Authors: Milton R, Gillespie D, Dyer C, Taiyari K, Carvalho MJ, Thomson K, Sands K, Portal EAR, Hood K, Ferreira A, Hender T, Kirby N, Mathias J, Nieto M, Watkins WJ, Bekele D, Abayneh M, Solomon S, Basu S, Nandy RK, Saha B, Iregbu K, Modibbo FZ, Uwaezuoke S, Zahra R, Shirazi H, Najeeb SU, Mazarati JB, Rucogoza A, Gaju L, Mehtar S, Bulabula ANH, Whitelaw AC, Walsh TR, Chan GJ.
Lancet Glob Health
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Enhancing Nutrition and Antenatal Infection Treatment (ENAT) study: protocol of a pragmatic clinical effectiveness study to improve birth outcomes in Ethiopia.
Authors: Authors: Lee AC, Abate FW, Mullany LC, Baye E, Berhane YY, Derebe MM, Eglovitch M, Fasil N, Olson IE, Kidane WT, Shiferaw T, Shiferie F, Tsegaye F, Tsegaye S, Yibeltal K, Chan GJ, Christian P, Isanaka S, Kang Y, Lu C, Mengistie MM, Molina RL, Stojanov MD, Van Dyk F, Tadesse AW, Wondale AT, Wylie BJ, Worku A, Berhane Y.
BMJ Paediatr Open
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