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Primary faculty

William Effah

Lecturer

MD, MPH, MBA

Additional info:

William (Bill) Effah helps oversee the applied practice experience — or practicum — program for students working toward their master of public health (MPH) degrees. He teaches Foundations of Epidemiology, Epidemiology Methods, and co-teaches Foundations of Field Education, where he works with students one-on-one to identify their interests and skills, and help them connect with one of more than 150 community partners in St. Louis and across the globe for their practicum experience.

Effah has worked for more than a decade in clinical, field and academic health care in the United States and internationally. A physician-scientist, he focuses on developing scalable, cost-effective and innovative health strategies and technology tools for managing infectious and chronic diseases in low-resource settings. As the senior manager for international research at WashU Medicine’s Institute for Informatics, Data Science and Biostatistics, he coordinated a large research initiative funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to integrate hypertension care into existing HIV care models across six African countries, directly addressing critical public health challenges related to chronic disease management in resource-limited settings.  

Effah also previously worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Global HIV and TB in Malawi, where he developed surveillance training programs, created dashboards to track COVID-19 trends, and enhanced HIV-surveillance efforts focused on estimating how recently individuals had been infected with the virus.  

Effah earned his MD at the University of Ghana, his MPH at the Brown School with a specialization in global health, and his MBA at WashU Olin Business. He is a McDonnell Scholar, a Kahn Family Fellow and an inductee of the Delta Omega National Honorary Society in Public Health. 

Areas of focus:

  • Teaching
  • MPH field learning experience
  • Infectious and chronic disease epidemiology 
  • Implementation science 
  • Global health

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