Who we are

Elvis Ndikum Achiri has expertise in clean air advocacy collaboration and has a passion for improving health and well-being. He is currently working with the Framework Convention Alliance for Tobacco Control as Advocacy Officer for the WHO Regional Office for Africa. He is a part of the World Heart Federation Emerging Leader 2016 cohort with a focus on reducing premature cardiovascular disease death globally by at least 25 percent by 2025 through tobacco control. Mr. Achiri is a member of The Union since 2015, and Principal Investigator for Yaounde, Cameroon with the Global Asthma Network. He is also National President of the Association for the Promotion of Youth Leadership, Advocacy and Volunteerism in Cameroon.

Dr. Balmes is Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Professor of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). He is an attending physician in the UCSF Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. At UCB, he is the Director of the Northern California Center for Occupational and Environmental Health and the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. He has been the physician member of the California Air Resources Board since 2008.

Dr. Jonathan Grigg is Professor of Pediatric Respiratory and Environmental Medicine at Queen Mary University of London, and an honorary consultant respiratory pediatrician at the Royal London Hospital. His recent research has focused on the effects of air pollution and the treatment of wheezing in young children. He leads a European Respiratory Society Clinical Research Collaboration on improving recruitment of children into trials of biologics for asthma, and a NIHR-funded Global Health Research Group on asthma in African children. He is also a member of the U.K. Department of Health Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution, and in 2016 launched the advocacy group “Doctors against Diesel.”

Carisse Hamlet is a global health professional with expertise in environmental health. Prior to joining Vital Strategies as an environmental health research assistant, she worked as a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Fellow for Project Concern International in Malawi. Ms. Hamlet earned her Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Delaware and a Master of Public Health in global health from Columbia University.

Daniel Kass has 30 years of experience in environmental health. Prior to joining Vital Strategies, he served as the Deputy Commissioner for the Division of Environmental Health Service at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for seven years, where he oversaw a variety of enforcement, policy, research and public communication programs and a staff of more than 900. Mr. Kass also worked for more than ten years promoting workplace safety and health.

Dr. Thomas Matte is Vice President for Environmental Health at Vital Strategies, where his work focuses on household and ambient air pollution and on promoting healthy and sustainable cities. He has more than 25 years of experience in environmental epidemiology, environmental health practice and policy development at the national and local level in the United States. Previously, he served as Assistant Commissioner for Environmental Surveillance and Policy at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where he directed studies of air pollution and other urban environmental hazards and applied public health evidence to the city’s air pollution and climate action plans.

Sumi Mehta is a global environmental health professional with over 17 years of experience. Prior to joining Vital Strategies as Senior Epidemiologist for Global Environmental Health, she served as the Senior Director for Research and Evaluation at the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an Initiative of the United Nations Foundation, working in Washington D.C. Dr. Mehta earned her B.A. (Anthropology), MPH (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) and Ph.D. (Environmental Health Science) from the University of California, Berkeley.

Kevin Mortimer is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), co-Deputy Director of the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Lung Health and TB in Africa at LSTM—IMPALA, and Director of Lung Health for the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease

Dr. Uju Ozoh is a pulmonologist and Senior Lecturer at the College of Medicine of the University of Lagos in Lagos, Nigeria. Dr. Ozoh obtained her medical degree from the University of Nigeria and has a fellowship in pulmonology from the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria. She obtained further clinical training and experience as a pulmonologist at the Tygerberg Academic Hospital, University of Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa and from the sleep medicine program of the Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York City. Her areas of research include airway diseases, pulmonary complications of chronic medical conditions, and respiratory exposures including tobacco epidemiology. She is currently exploring the health effects of household kerosene use in Nigeria. Dr. Ozoh is committed to improving the practice of respiratory medicine in Nigeria through research, advocacy and capacity building.

Dr. Neil Schluger is Chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine and Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Environmental Health Science at the Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Schluger is also Senior Advisor for Health at Vital Strategies. Dr. Schluger’s academic career has focused on tuberculosis, the global tobacco epidemic, and other issues related to global lung health, particularly in resource-limited settings.

Dr. Sean Semple is an Associate Professor at the University of Stirling in Scotland. He has 20 years of experience in human exposure science, with interests in the health effects of indoor air pollution, tobacco control research, and occupational epidemiology. Dr. Semple is the author of over 150 research publications and the editor of the textbook “Monitoring Health Hazards at Work.” His recent research program has provided evidence to help reduce exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke in Scotland through legislation that prohibit smoking in cars carrying children, media campaigns to encourage smoke-free homes, and through policies such as smoke-free prisons. He is passionate about the use of household air pollution exposure measurements for advocacy to improve living conditions in low- and middle-income settings.