Dr. Bernard Nahlen, Deputy Coordinator, PMI
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| Dr. Bernard Nahlen, Deputy Coordinator, President's Malaria Initiative |
Bernard Nahlen, M.D.
Captain, U.S. Public Health Service
Deputy Coordinator, President’s Malaria Initiative
Admiral Tim Ziemer, Coordinator of the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), has named Dr. Bernard Nahlen to serve as Deputy Coordinator of PMI, effective March 5, 2007. Dr. Nahlen is a Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Public Health Service assigned to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Global Health and has most recently served as Senior Advisor, Monitoring and Evaluation, at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund).
As PMI’s Deputy Coordinator, Dr. Nahlen will assist the Coordinator in directing PMI. Specific responsibilities include serving as the Senior Technical Advisor to the Coordinator, providing guidance on malaria technical issues and program interventions; assisting in-country programs, program facilitation, policy coordination, coherence and implementation among all U.S. Government (USG) agencies and other recipients of USG funds for malaria prevention and treatment; engaging other donors, host countries, the Global Fund, Roll Back Malaria (RBM), WHO, UNICEF, and other relevant organizations; and ensuring implementation of a monitoring and evaluation program, transparency of programs, clear results, and outcomes.
Dr. Nahlen was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he graduated from medical school after completing undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame. He completed a residency in Family Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, before joining the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (HHS/CDC) in 1986 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer assigned to the Malaria Branch. In 1989, he completed a second residency in preventive medicine and later served as Deputy Director of the Los Angeles County AIDS Epidemiology Program.
Dr. Nahlen’s commitment to malaria prevention and control subsequently took him to Kenya in 1992 as Director of the HHS/CDC field research station in collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). During his seven years in Kenya, the HHS/CDC/KEMRI group conducted several landmark studies, demonstrating the efficacy of insecticide-treated mosquito nets in reducing child mortality in an area of intense transmission; the efficacy of intermittent preventive treatment for malaria in improving the health of pregnant women and their newborns; and interactions between malaria and HIV in pregnant women and their infants.
In 2000, Dr. Nahlen was seconded from the HHS/CDC Malaria Branch as Senior Technical Advisor to the new WHO RBM initiative. At WHO, he led the Monitoring and Evaluation team as well as the Malaria in Pregnancy team. Since 2003, he has also served as Chair of the RBM Monitoring and Evaluation Reference group, which was established to develop consensus on core indicators; data collection methods; priority issues for research related to monitoring and evaluation; and data analysis and reporting. He oversaw the production of the Africa Malaria Report 2003 and the World Malaria Report 2005, which WHO and UNICEF produced on behalf of the RBM partners. From 2005-2006, Dr. Nahlen was seconded to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as a senior advisor in the Performance Evaluation and Policy unit.
Dr. Nahlen has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications related to malaria prevention and control.