Danstan Bagenda is a new faculty member at UNMC’s College of Public Health. Here’s a brief rundown of his background and the expertise he brings to campus.
- Name: Danstan Bagenda, Ph.D.
- Hometown: Kampala, Uganda
- New title and department at UNMC: Assistant professor, global epidemiology, UNMC College of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology
Research/Professional Interests:
- Infectious disease research with a bias towards mothers, children and “vulnerable populations;”
- Improving and ensuring efficient and sustainable scale up and quality of coverage of public health solutions via disease and health systems modeling and data science;
- Improving health-related outcomes of resource-constrained populations around the globe using simplified knowledge-based solutions; and
- Listening to any good live jazz & world music while at it.
How I fell in love with disease control and global epidemiology and biostatistics:
I grew up in the midst of Idi Amin’s Uganda and the chaos thereafter, with a number of my peers becoming child soldiers in a Uganda that was in a rapid downwards spiral. I was inspired out of necessity to innovate methodologically in order to help my country folk confront the “ground-zero” for HIV/AIDS in what was then known as “the country that God forgot.”
Degrees:
- Ph.D., Johns Hopkins
- M. Sc., London School of Hygiene Tropical Medicine
Memberships:
- Fellow Royal Statistical Society
- American Statistical Society
- American Statistical Society – Epidemiology Section
Three things people may not know about me:
- I hosted an award-winning radio jazz show for several years and once wrote a published Washington Post op-ed 30 minutes before doing my show.
- I played bongos, percussion and guitar in a Seattle-based eclectic music group called Science Groove that allowed its members to mix their passion for science and music into a tool of communication, joy, and social interaction and some serious grooves.
- I was once a national athlete and perennially competed well as a sprinter against the strong Kenyan teams.