Dr Maria Almond completed the Global Health Residency Program in 2010 and is currently practicing in Michigan. She completed her bachelor’s degree in English at Wellesley College and medical school at Harvard. She completed her Psychiatry residency training at Duke University Medical Center. As part of the Global Health Residency, she completed a Masters in Public Health at UNC- Chapel Hill and nine months of mentored clinical research in Moshi, Tanzania.

Dr Almond brought to the Global Health Residency her strong commitment to multicultural health issues and public policy related to the care of women and children. She devoted a 5th year of medical school to work on an NIMH-funded intervention examining child health and development among 10-14 year-old children in Moshi, Tanzania. Her research has focused on community approaches to health promotion of children affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She helped to develop child-to-child health promotion curriculum for 10-14 year-old youth to support the children in developing their own community action on HIV/AIDS issues of importance to their community.

For the intensive field experience portion of the Global Health Residency, Dr Almond engaged in several research projects, including a long-running project on coping with HIV/AIDS and another project on validating and putting into practice a measurement-based tool for depression, so that non-medical professionals in HIV clinics will be able to appropriately monitor depressive symptoms.

Representative Publications:

• Adams JL, Almond ML, Ringo EJ, Shangali WH, Sikkema KJ. Feasibility of nurse-led antidepressant medication management of depression in an HIV clinic in Tanzania. Int J Psychiatry Med. 2012;43(2):105-17.