Health Professions Education Committee: HPE Committee
Dr. Jonathan Quartey (Coordinator) is Senior Lecturer and Head, Department of Physiotherapy, School of Biomedical and Allied Health Sciences, College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana. Jonathan Quartey has garnered over 16 years’ experience and extensive international exposure in Physiotherapy, having had the opportunity to serve as a practitioner, lecturer and researcher. He has served and continues to serve on some University Boards and Committees (including Ethics and Protocol Review Committee for SBAHS, World Confederation for Physical Therapy Membership Committee and Health Science Journal Committee of the College of Health Sciences) in different capacities. Jonathan has participated in, and presented at numerous scientific conferences, workshops and continuing education programmes including being a Resource Person for the American College of Sports Medicine International Team Physician Course held in Accra. He has reviewed several abstracts for Conferences/Congress, is a Reviewer of a peer reviewed Journal and has twenty publications.
He is also the current Chairman of the Africa Region of the World Confederation for Physical Therapy. He is a member of the Scientific Committee for the 2020 Africa Region, World Confederation for Physical Therapy Congress to be held in Cotonou Benin and also a Member of the Medical Sub-Committee of Ghana Olympic Committee for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games. He is the past President, Ghana Physiotherapy Association and past Chairman, National Council, Ghana Physiotherapy Association.
In addition to clinical practice, he has served on numerous occasions as a member of the technical teams of sporting disciplines in Ghana, particularly for football and athletics for both local and international assignments.
Jonathan Quartey holds a PhD in Physiotherapy (University of Pretoria, South Africa) and two master’s degrees which are an MSc in Health Professions Education (University of Maastricht, the Netherlands) and an MSc in Physiotherapy (University of Ibadan, Nigeria).
Dr. Michael Lartey (School of Pharmacy) has been a lecturer at the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, UG School of Pharmacy, since July 2017. Prior to joining the University of Ghana, he was a lecturer at the Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Energy and Natural Resources, UENR, Sunyani, for three years. Dr. Lartey had his training in Organic/Polymer Chemistry with focus on the design, synthesis and characterization of small molecules, ionic liquids and polymers for applications in drug delivery, molecular sensing, gas capture and molecular separation. Before joining UENR, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) of the United States’ Department of Energy (USDOE) from 2011 to 2013.
During this period, he was also a visiting scholar at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, where he was part of a team of scientists involved in the development of membranes and ionic liquids for enhanced carbon capture and sequestration.
Dr. Lartey’s current research focuses on mycotoxins and heavy metal contamination in food and medicinal products; monitoring of pharmaceutical waste in the environment; and physicochemical and therapeutic properties of medicinal plants.
Dr. Samuel Adjorlolo is a lecturer in the Department of Mental Health Nursing, University of Ghana. He holds a PhD in Applied Social Sciences, specializing in forensic clinical psychology, from the City University of Hong Kong. Prior to this, he graduated from the University of Ghana where he received Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Nursing and Psychology, and Clinical Psychology, respectively. He also received a Master of Science degree in Telemedicine and e-health from the UiT-Arctic University of Norway. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals, and book chapters published by renowned publishers such as Routledge.
Dr. Adjorlolo has presented his research works at international conferences across the globe. He has received several honors and awards, including the prestigious Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies and research tuition scholarships by City University of Hong Kong, and Emerging Psychologist by International Congress of Psychology.
Dr. Emmanuel Bonney (SBAHS) Dr. Emmanuel Bonney is Assistant Lecturer in Physiotherapy at the University of Ghana. He is a neurological physiotherapist specializing in autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders. Dr. Bonney’s recent work focuses on developing targeted interventions for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families. Much of this work involves paediatric populations living in low-income settings. In an effort to create a culturally appropriate screening tool for early identification of autism in low-income African settings.
Dr. Bonney is collaborating with colleagues from the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA, and Makerere University in Uganda. He is currently the principal investigator of the Ugandan Early Childhood Phenoscreening Project, which aims to identify phenotypic biomarkers of autism in high-risk infants and toddlers. Dr. Bonney has authored many scientific publications on topics related to motor control, learning, physical fitness and intervention in developmental coordination disorder.
He is an active clinician and regularly presents to both academic and practitioner audiences locally and internationally.
Linda Amoah - (NMIMR) An effective malaria vaccine is key to sustainable control and elimination strategies. My laboratory is taking an integrated approach to both evaluate malaria transmission in the field and design new transmission blocking agents, including the identification and characterization of host receptors for gametocyte surface ligands.
In addition to producing and evaluating the efficacy of transmission blocking malaria vaccine candidates, I have projects in place to evaluate the development of transmission blocking immunity and the production of gametocytes during a natural infection. I am also very interested in identifying host genetic determinants of malaria pathogenesis and transmission traits as well as genetic determinants of other diseases including non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
My laboratory is also interested in identifying safe and effective herbal products that would aid reduce malaria transmission by acting on the sexual transmissible forms in addition to the asexual disease-causing parasite. We also recently confirmed the existence of parasites with deletions in exon 2 of the pfhrp2 gene that cause false negative RDT results.
I am a member of the expert working group on malaria at the Malaria Center for Excellence, the Non Communicable Diseases Support Center and the Health Professions Education Committee (HPEC) of the College of Health Sciences, all of the University of Ghana. I am a part-time lecturer at the Department of Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology (BCMB) and faculty at the West Africa Center for Cell Biology of Infections Pathogens (WACCBIP) of the University of Ghana.
Dr. Amos Laar, Dr. Laar has academic training in Nutrition, Public Health, and Bioethics. In his independent scholarship, he draws on theoretical and methodological perspectives from these three fields, to understand how physical environment, social environment, and the macro-environment affect health. Currently, his research focuses on two distinct, yet related areas of public health: bioethics–ethics & public health; health & human rights, nutrition rights, food and nutrition ethics; and public health nutrition–food and nutrition literacy, nutrition-related non-communicable diseases – particularly the nexus between food environment and health. He spent the last decade exploring the “socio-cultural, socio-ethical, and medico-ethical dimensions of a sexually/perinatally transmissible infection–HIV. Dr. Laar is an active researcher having served as Principal/Co-Investigator of over 20 successful research grants at the University of Ghana. From 2015, when he decided to channel his research efforts into nutrition-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs), he has co-led the evaluation of the Novartis Foundation-funded “Community-based Hypertension Improvement Project in Lower Manya Krobo, Ghana”; the UK Government DFID/Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded “Dietary Transitions in Ghanaian Cities”; as well as the MRC-funded “Dietary Transitions in African Cities Projects” (both projects aimed to identify how social, and physical environments drive consumption of energy dense nutrient-poor foods and beverages).
He is the Principal Investigator of an IDRC-funded project which is “measuring the healthiness of Ghanaian children’s food environments to prevent obesity and non-communicable diseases”; and a Co-Principal Investigator and Ghana Lead of an NIH-funded project which will establish a master programme in Bioethics at the University of Ghana – the first of such in Ghana. Dr. Laar writes for both academic and non-academic audiences. Currently, his scholarly works include 68 scientific publications - one book, five book chapters, 62 Journal articles (44 of which are indexed in PubMed and 45 in Scopus databases). His non-academic works includes 16 OpEds/feature articles, and commentaries in local print/electronic media.
Dr. Laar is a mentor; having supervised over 60 graduate and undergraduate theses from the University of Ghana, University of South Africa, the Nagasaki University of Japan, and currently from the University of Sheffield, UK. He is the Founder of hm2r (www.hm2r.org), - a global mentoring think tank, and President of African Nutrition Association (a learned society with members from all over Africa; www.ansnet.org). Dr. Laar was recently recognized in the Lancet Biomedical Journal, for his efforts at combating nutrition-related NCDs in Ghana. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(19)30216-5/fulltext
Prior to this recognition, Dr. Laar has been engaged internationally on matters relating to public health nutrition, including participating in the 66th Session of the UN-General Assembly Meeting in New York, 2011 (during which a new international agenda on NCDs was birthed). Dr. Laar has also been Ghana’s representative at several High Level Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Global Gathering Events. In 2017, he was invited to present his work to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Expert Group Meeting on “Reducing Child Stunting in Africa.
Dr. Dzifa Dey - SMD
Bio: Dr Dey is a consultant Physician and Rheumatologist at the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics of the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital and Lecturer at the University of Ghana, School of Medicine and Dentistry. She is a pioneer of the first rheumatology clinic in Ghana she started in 2009 and Director of The Rheumatology Initiative TRI. Her drive to study Medical education stems from a dearth of equivalent professional programs to produce well-trained medical educators needed to service the ever growing need for teachers as more medical schools spring up to meet the need for more doctors. Medical education is witnessing a worldwide movement toward innovation in medical education programs to suit the changing needs of students and the populace, with a drive to excellence and recognition by international agencies and institutions.
She believes it is in the long term interest of the College to set up this office of medical education to provide academic leadership for the departments, promotion of staff collaboration, fostering career development of the staff and establishing local, regional and international links.
Married with three children, her hobbies include reading, cooking, discovering new restaurants and poetry.
Credentials:
MSc in Rheumatology, Kings College London
Fogarty/New York University Cardiovascular research fellow
Fellow: West African and Ghana Colleges of Physicians
Clinical and Research Fellowship: University College London Hospitals
Royal College of Physicians Speciality Certificate in Rheumatology
Certificate EULAR online course in Rheumatology
Positions:
Lecturer: School of Medicine and Dentistry University of Ghana
Head of Rheumatology Unit: Korle bu Teaching Hospital
Training and Research Lead: Department of Medicine, Korle bu Teaching Hospital, Ghana
Training Coordinator West African and Ghana Colleges of Physicians
Founder and Director: The Rheumatology Initiative
Member: American College of Rheumatology
Member: African League against Rheumatism