PRESENTERS
Timothy Barkham, MBBS, MSc, FRCPath
Dr. Barkham studied medicine and then specialised as a Microbiologist at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, UK. He worked at the Hammersmith Hospitals for 2 years before moving to Singapore in 1999. He enjoys clinical infectious diseases, epidemiology and outbreak investigation. He has a 20% teaching appointment at the National University of Singapore. He has developed diagnostic assays that are marketed in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia. He showed that ST283 was the cause of the outbreak in Singapore in 2015, and, with colleagues, pursued it’s epidemiology across Asia. Presentation: Streptococcus agalactiae ST283 causing invasive sepsis in healthy adults is widespread in SE Asia (slides) |
Andria Calicchio van Niekerk, BA Speech Therapy & Audiology
I am a Speech Pathologist and Audiologist working in Dubai, UAE with a passion and focus on early intervention and school-age therapy. I am also a mother of a beautiful little girl who passed away due to meningitis caused by undetected GBS. Presentation: Early oral motor stimulation to assist babies with NG tube feeding and promote oral feeding by assisting parents in ho to correctly promote oral feeds |
Charmaine Carvalho, BSC, LMT, MLDT, LBA
Charmaine Carvalho has held several positions within the board of directors for the bilingual Quebec Association of Doulas since its birth in 2012. Today, as Vice President of its Anglophone division, she liaises with French and English hospitals, provincial birth centers, and gynaecology medical clinics. Besides juggling a healthy perinatal massage practice with being an active doula, she's finessing her very own collaborative birth project-Doula SVP, a new concept of Hospital Doula Program that aims to provide last-minute affordable inclusive doula care during birthing & postpartum within the Montreal region. Presentation: Lean On Me: Today's doula goes farther. From preconception assistance, lifestyle counselling to birth, loss & beyond, doulas deliver compassionate informed physical and emotional support |
Jaime G. Deville, MD
I am a Clinical Professor at the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UCLA, where I teach and mentor undergraduate, graduate, medical students, residents, and Pediatric Infectious Disease fellows from our university and other national and international medical schools. My scientific career has focused in the field of pathogenesis, epidemiology and treatment of resistant gram-positive infections, HIV-1 pathogenesis, immune reconstitution, antiretrovirals, and vaccinology. I have done research in antibacterials, antifungals, and antiviral agents. I am the Principal Investigator at UCLA for several NIH-funded networks, including the International Maternal Pediatric and Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) Network, the DMID/Influenza DCR Network, the Pediatric Trials Network (PTN), the Adolescent Trials Network (ATN), and the INSIGHT Network. In addition, I am recipient of a HRSA Ryan White part D grant that funds the UCLA Family AIDS Network, a seven-center consortium that cares for uninsured women, infants, children and youth living with HIV. Presentation: Group B Streptococcal Bone and Joint Infections in Neonates and Infants |
Ryan Doster, MD, PhD
Dr. Ryan Doster is an Instructor of Clinical Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Doster’s research focuses on understanding how GBS causes infection during pregnancy by examining how GBS interacts with immune cells within the reproductive tract. Presentation: Fetal membrane defenses against GBS infection |
Ozlem Equils, MD, FAAP
Ozlem Equils is a board certified Pediatrician. She is a NIH and March of Dimes funded, past Associate Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Equils is the founder and president of an educational, public health, non-profit called MiOra (miora.org), with a mission to improve the diversity in STEM and healthcare fields. She is a patented scientist with a new medical device in development. The device will help identify women at risk for poor pregnancy outcome. Dr Equils is a member of the Cedars Sinai Biosafety Committee, Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society training committee, advisory board of UCLA Master of Applied Statistics, and executive committees of Immunize LA Families Coalition and Immunization Coalition of LA County. Presentation: Timely Recognition and Prevention of Late Onset GBS Sepsis |
Angela Graeve, RN, BSN
Angela is the mother of two GBS survivors and is a registered nurse. She is a mother baby nurse who works with new mothers and newborns in the well nursery and NICU. Angela also works as a maternal/child clinical nursing instructor, educating nursing students. Angela has 13 years of OB nursing experience and has a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Presentation: Our GBS story: The Graeve Twins |
Lucía Gómez Mompeán, MD
My name is Lucía Gómez Mompeán. I'm 27 years old and I studied Medicine in Murcia's University. Since 2017, I'm doing Obstetrics & Ginecology specialization in Virgen de las Nieves Univerisity Hospital, Granada, Spain. With my workmates, we present you a casecontrol study about the relationship between GBS colonization and maternal obesity. Presentation: Maternal obesity and the risk of group B streptococcal colonisation in pregnant women |
Sherokee Ilse, BA, BLFA
Sherokee is an International speaker, grief and loss trainer, bereaved parent and author of 18 books/booklets mostly on infant loss, including her first and most popular self-help book for parents and families, Empty Arms: Coping with Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Death and a co-authored book with Tim Nelson, Couple Communication After a Baby Dies: Differing Perspectives. Her newest book is, The Prenatal Bombshell: Help and hope when continuing or ending a precious pregnancy after an abnormal diagnosis. She had three babies who died too soon and two living sons. Through her newest organization, Loss Doulas International and Baby Loss Family advisors, she trains and helps certify individuals to become one-to-one companions, advisors, guides, and navigators to families soon after hearing the bad news, through their process of preparation and meeting their baby, and beyond. Presentation: How to present difficult information positively to help patients listen and feel heard |
Kirsty Le Doare, MD, PHD
Dr. Kirsty Le Doare is a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and National Institute for Health Research funded Future Leaders Fellow working between the UK and Uganda. She has over 15 years of clinical and research experience in childhood infection. She completed her undergraduate medical training and paediatric academic training in London, UK. During her PhD she investigated Group B Streptococcal functional antibody in blood and breastmilk and its role in protection against infant colonisation in the Gambia using a novel complement deposition assay.She leads a neonatal immunology network, an international network of clinicians and scientists working together in neonatal GBS that extends to 12 countries worldwide.She is currently leading a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded international collaboration to standardize assays to measure antibody against GBS with the aim of facilitating the development of an immune correlate of protection against GBS colonization and disease. Her main research interests are age-related immune responses to infectious diseases, in particular to Group B-streptococcus (GBS) in neonates and maternal vaccination.She is involved in pre-clinical vaccine development, multi-centre clinical trials and infectious diseases epidemiology research in the UK and in Africa. Presentation: Group B Streptococcus in Breastmilk |
Susannah Hopkins Leisher MA, MSC, MPHIL
Susannah Hopkins Leisher spent over 20 years working on global poverty alleviation, including ten years based in Vietnam, where she was for five years the Vietnam country representative for Oxfam Hong Kong, as well as consulting for a wide range of agencies including the UN, DFID, the World Bank and various NGOs. She is co-chair of the Stillbirth Advocacy Working Group, a board member of the International Stillbirth Alliance, and an honorary fellow of the Mater Research Institute, University of Queensland. She is currently a third-year doctoral student in epidemiology at Columbia University with a National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award. Her research interest is stillbirth,and perinatal mortality generally, including the overlap between stillbirth and inequity, reducing unexplained stillbirths, the global socio-political environment for stillbirth prevention, and translating research into practice. Ms. Leisher lives in New Jersey, USA, with her husband and three sons, and is also the mother of Wilder Daniel who was stillborn at full term in 1999 with no cause found. Presentation: Introducing a score card to measure progress against global targets |
James A. McGregor, MDCM
Dr. James A. McGregor has served as Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology practicing at UCLA, USC and the University of Colorado Hospital. Dr. McGregor practiced as a fully engaged obstetrician and gynecologist for forty years at Cedars-Sinai/UCLA, Tucson Medical Center and University of Colorado Hospitals until his retirement in 2010. He is currently on Group B Strep International's Board of Directors and shares his expertise with GBSI through giving presentations and talking to providers and parents at perinatal conference exhibits around the world. Presentation: Is Written Consent Required Before Fetal Membrane Stripping Especially among GBS Carriers? |
James M. Nicholson, MD MSCE
Dr. Nicholson graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1984 and completed his residency in Family Medicine with the Duke-Watts Program in North Carolina in 1987. He was in private practice in Northeastern Connecticut until 1997, at which time he returned to the University of Pennsylvania to teach maternity care/obstetrics within that institution’s newly formed Family Medicine Residency Program At the University of Pennsylvania, he developed a research agenda that focused on the regular use of risk-based labor induction to lower cesarean delivery rates and published several major research papers. In 2012 Dr. Nicholson moved to the Penn State Hershey Family Medicine Residency Program and while there he spearheaded a study that identified an association in the USA between decreasing early term labor induction activity and increasing term stillbirth rates. This past December, Dr. Nicholson joined the Wellspan Medical Group in Central Pennsylvania. He continues to pursue research focusing on the impact of variable rates of labor induction on term pregnancy outcomes. Presentation: Theoretical Approaches to the Prevention of Peripartum GBS Neonatal Sepsis in Pregnancy and Delivery at Term |
Amy Perhach
Amy Perhach is the Communications Coordinator of Group B Strep International (GBSI). Amy, previously, volunteered at GBSI for over a decade, having lost a sister to group B strep. She has a Communication Studies background with a focus on Interpersonal and Organizational Skills. Presentation: What parents should know to help protect their baby from group B strep (GBS) |
Karen M. Puopolo, MD, PhD
Karen M. Puopolo, M.D., Ph.D. is a neonatologist who specializes in neonatal infectious diseases. Dr. Puopolo is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She is a member of the Division of Neonatology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Section Chief for Newborn Medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital. Dr. Puopolo received her undergraduate degree in physics from Yale University, and went on to obtain her M.D. as well as a Ph.D. in molecular physiology from the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. She completed Pediatric residency and Neonatal-Perinatal fellowship training at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Puopolo was appointed to the faculty of Harvard Medical School from 2000-2014 where she was a physician and researcher at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Channing Laboratory. She began her neonatal research career as a laboratory-based scientist investigating mechanisms of virulence in Group B Streptococcus. Her research now focuses on neonatal sepsis epidemiology and risk assessment. In collaboration with Dr. Gabriel Escobar, she developed and validated models to quantify the risk of neonatal early-onset sepsis among term and late preterm infants. These models form the basis of the “sepsis risk calculator” that is transforming the U.S. national approach to neonatal early-onset sepsis. She is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the impact of neonatal antibiotic exposures on the newborn and early childhood microbiome, and on infant and early childhood growth. Dr. Puopolo is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on the Fetus and Newborn, and is lead author of the Academy’s revised management guidelines for prevention and management of neonatal GBS disease. Presentation: Revised GBS Prevention Guidelines |
Lindsey J. Wimmer, RN, MSN, PHN, CPNP, CPLC
Lindsey Wimmer is the Founder and Executive Director of the Star Legacy Foundation based in Minnesota with 25 chapters across the United States. As a pediatric nurse practitioner, she was shocked and embarrassed when her first son was stillborn at term after a ‘textbook pregnancy’. She did not realize that stillbirth was something that still happened and even more concerned when looking for medical literature on the topic. Finding out that 26,000 babies are stillborn in the US each year and for most the cause is never known and that research was virtually non-existent at that time as to why this was the case–was unacceptable. Today the Foundation is dedicated to pregnancy & infant loss awareness, research, education, advocacy and family support. This presentation will discuss the newly launched Pregnancy Research Project the Foundation is conducting in partnership with Michigan Medicine at the University of Michigan. Presentation: The Pregnancy Research Project: A Collaborative Approach to Pregnancy Research |