Grace Chan, MD, MPH, PhD

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.