Amrita Institute for Health, a 501 (C) (3) Non-profit organization based in Stanford, California, USA, is dedicated to the adoption, regular use and evaluation of technology to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable populations everywhere.

The Team

Dennis M. Israelski, M.D.

Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

Dr. Israelski has amassed a lifetime of diverse accomplishments in the domain of medicine, infectious diseases, and global public health. He is an internationally recognized clinician, educator, and researcher, whose career has been dedicated to ensuring that most vulnerable populations have access to high-quality, community-based healthcare services. A major theme of his work over the last three decades—- including when he served as Chief Medical Officer at the Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation and as President & CEO of a TED Prize start-up NGO, (InSTEDD)–has been on the use of innovative technologies to strengthen public healthcare delivery and to improve earlier detection/better response to Disease outbreaks and Health related events He is a pioneer in AIDS Medicine, as one of the earliest clinicians and public health advocates for effective treatment and prevention strategies for the most vulnerable populations with or at risk for HIV/AIDS in the SF Bay Area and part of a small cadre of physicians first to treat people living with HIV/AIDS across Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Israelski worked with civil societies across sub-Saharan Africa to develop and implement a community-driven model for treatment of patients with HIV and AIDS (AIDS Empowerment and Treatment International). He currently has an active clinical practice, advises various Multinational Corporations on Global Health Science and Technology, is the Chief Medical Officer at a Catalia Health, and a Clinical Professor (Affiliate) at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he also serves as Senior Fellow at the Center for Innovation in Global Health.

Professor David A. Katzenstein, MD

Co-Founder, Director of Global Health

Professor Katzenstein is an internationally recognized clinical virologist with decades of experience in the design , development and implementation of diagnostic technologies for more effective management of treatment of AIDS.

He was a visiting lecturer for two years in the Departments of Medical Microbiology and Medicine at the University University of Zimbabwe as the AIDS epidemic was first recognized in Southern Africa. In 1987, he returned to the U.S. to take up a senior research fellowship at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at the Food and Drug Administration in the Vaccine Branch, evaluating early candidate HIV Vaccines and diagnostics. Dr. Katzenstein returned to California in 1989 to join the Faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine. He continues an active collaboration with his colleagues in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa in prevention, perinatal transmission and vaccine research. At Stanford, Dr. Katzenstein participates in studies of multiple drugs and drug combinations in Clinical Trials in the U.S. and Europe and is the principal investigator for Stanford’s Virology Service Laboratory in the center for AIDS Research. At Stanford, he also teaches undergraduate courses in Global Health and mentors postdoctoral fellows in AIDS Research. He has ongoing program and research activities in Zimbabwe, spending 2-3 months a year in Southern Africa, where he has many projects under development to examine community-based adoption of innovative ICT and diagnostic technologies to improve health outcomes among Adults and Children with chronic medical disorders.

Dr. Katzenstein is currently:

Professor Emeritus (research) of Medicine (Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine)
Emeritus Faculty, Acad Council, Medicine – Infectious Diseases
Member, Bio-X

Jason Halberstadt

Chief Operations Officer

Please contact Mr. Halberstadt (jason@amrita.ngo) about alliances, initiatives, and ideas.

Mr. Halberstadt is an accomplished entrepreneur and consultant with international CEO experience leading Metamorf, a digital agency and software development company based in Quito, Ecuador since 1998. During this time, he has managed over 1000 Information Communications and Technology projects for governmental, non-profit and for-profit organizations including the Ecuadorian Ministry of Public Health, Ecuador’s leading hospital and one of the world’s top twenty insurance companies. Previously he worked in biopharmaceutical formulations at Synergen (acquired by Amgen) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He has a degree in Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Caroline Maposhere

Zimbabwe Director of Programs

Caroline works with Amrita in Zimbabwe, where she has lived and worked her entire life. She is a nurse, midwife, and freelance sexual health consultant with extensive experience at the local, national, and international level working on programs for HIV, gender and reproductive health research, and policy development programs in Zimbabwe. She developed the National Female Condom Strategy for Zimbabwe and was with the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare for over ten years. She has an extensive work history with several IGOs and NGOs in Zimbabwe including the US Peace Corps and HIVOS.

Caroline will provide on ground support for AMRITA initiatives, including the use of ICT and point of care diagnostics to improve Health outcomes in rural communities affected by AIDS; organizing a mHealth warm line for people with and at risk for HIV/AIDS; organizing micro-enterprise activities to generate incomes to support health of women, children and families in Zimbabwe.

Simitha Singh-Rambiritch

Medical Researcher & Writer

Dr. Simitha Singh-Rambiritch is a Dental Surgeon with a Masters in Science in Oral Medicine and Periodontology from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research focused on early indicators of diseases related to various forms of Oral Cancer. Her latest study investigated saliva samples in patients with Oral Lichen Planus using flow cytometry to determine markers which could indicate malignancy. Her study was so novel for the time that she was awarded the Margot Lachmann Travel Fellowship award. In 2014, Dr. Singh-Rambiritch was invited to present the results of her pilot study at the prestigious 9th Annual International Congress on Autoimmunity in Nice, France, and was praised for the novelty and flawless execution of the clinical study.

Dr. Singh-Rambiritch co-founded and opened an accessory business called Like Audrey Accessories in Johannesburg in 2010 and worked in collaboration with the non-profit organization People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA), showcasing designs made by abused victims in shelters. After moving to the Bay Area in 2014, Dr. Singh-Rambiritch got involved as a medical advisor for health start-ups. In 2015 she was appointed as a Director of Nature Village, an organization in association with UC Berkeley and The Green Fund Initiative to promote sustainable projects in the student housing community. Her areas of interest are global health and technology in health care.

Vanessa Erskine

Microenterprise Consultant

Vanessa has worked in business strategy and management with women artisans and women-owned businesses in Rwanda, Ghana, and for Amrita’s ZEEBags in Zimbabwe. She has an MBA from Pepperdine University with a certificate in Socially, Ethically, and Environmentally Responsible Business Strategy. She currently owns her own ethical jewelry business, Vanessa Baba.

Noah Freedman

Developer

Noah Freedman has extensive expertise in the development and deployment of information and communications technology (ICT) solutions for resource-limited settings. Freedman studied international development at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and has been developing software and studying computer science since age 12.
Freedman combines these interests with his work on education technology solutions for resource-limited settings. For the past seven years, Freedman built ICT for development projects, serving as Software Director and Technology Advisor to Seeds of Empowerment, and as Executive Director of the Smile Consortium. He has conducted field research in low-income classrooms in Mexico, India, and Indonesia. Over the past three years, Freedman worked with the University of Zimbabwe College of Health Sciences (UZCHS) to install an offline education resources portal, and to conduct workshops on education technology solutions developed at Stanford. Freedman worked at the Center for Education Research at Stanford (CERAS) until 2015, where he led the software development for the Smile project, an innovative off-the-grid learning environment designed to sync web applications and online content to offline portable servers. Smile has been deployed in over 22 countries. Freedman recently left Stanford to found PortableCloud, an organization dedicated to providing access to information and affordable digital tools to areas in the world that lack affordable, consistent, and reliable Internet access. Freedman also runs a software consulting business called Third Eye Labs.