On Saturday, October 26th the NYU School of Global Public Health (GPH) will honor three outstanding alumni for their impressive career achievements, commitment to public health and dedicated support of the GPH community. The honorees will be recognized at the inaugural GPH Alumni Award reception at Trattoria One Fifth during NYU Alumni and Families Weekend.
The honorees were selected by the Awards Committee and were nominated by their peers:
Distinguished Alumnus
Dr. Hamada Hamid Altalib (MPH '08)
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Outstanding Recent Graduates
Ekemini Isaiah (MPH '18)
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Ashlee Wisdom (MPH '18)
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About the Honorees
Dr. Hamada Hamid Altalib (MPH '08) is the Chief of Neurology at the Veteran Affairs (VA) Connecticut Healthcare System. He helped establish a VA neurobehavioral clinic, which provides clinical care for veterans who suffer from emotional distress and/or behavioral problems associated with neurological conditions. At Yale University he also provides care for people with neurological injury that impact emotional processing.
Dr. Altalib is one of the founding editors of the Journal of Muslim Mental Health, which he started while a graduate student at GPH. He has served as Chief Editor since 2011, and the journal is now published as an open access journal by the University of Michigan Press. The journal is the most cited source in the field of Muslim mental health, and in the last ten years it has over 200,000 unique views online.
While most of Dr. Altalib’s scholarly work focuses on the neuropsychiatry of epilepsy and the coordination of neurological health services, he also examines the role of culture and religion in mental health among American Muslims.
Read Dr. Hamada Hamid Altalib's Q&A
Ekemini Isaiah (MPH '18) specializes in regulatory and legislative health policy. Her expertise includes Medicare Part B and Part D coverage and payment policy, drug pricing reforms, the 340B program, and other efforts to improve patient access and affordability. Currently, Isaiah is the Director of Public Policy at Daiichi Sankyo, where she leads the public policy strategy to support patient access to Daiichi Sankyo’s oncology portfolio.
Prior to working at Daiichi Sankyo, Isaiah was an Associate Principal at Avalere Health, where she advised a broad set of stakeholders on the evolving health policy landscape and potential impacts on their access, advocacy and commercial priorities. Before joining Avalere, Isaiah worked at the London School of Economics as a Visiting Research Scholar analyzing long-term care systems, interventions and policy measures to reduce dependency cost effectively across the European Union. Isaiah received her MPH in Health Policy & Management from GPH and her BS from Cornell University in Biology & Society.
Ashlee Wisdom (MPH '18) is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Health In Her HUE, a digital health platform aimed at reducing racial health disparities by leveraging the power of technology, media and community to improve health outcomes for Black women and other women of color. She holds over a decade of experience working across the healthcare industry at companies such as Weill Cornell Medicine, NYC Health + Hospitals, and Junto Health.
Wisdom is a passionate public health innovator and a champion for equitable access to quality care for all. Through her efforts, she has raised over four million dollars in venture capital funding in order to advance Health In Her HUE’s mission. In 2022, she was named an Aspen Institute Healthy Communities Fellow and was honored by FemTech Focus with the First in FemTech Award. She earned an MPH with a focus in Healthcare Policy and Management from GPH and a BS in Psychology from Howard University.