New faculty spotlight: Danstan Bagenda, Ph.D.

Danstan Bagenda, Ph.D.

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.