MEET OUR TEAM
Co-Directors
Ronak Patel, MD
Ronak A. Patel, MD is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and an attending physician in the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Department at Cohen Children’s Medical Center. She completed a pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore and her pediatric emergency medicine fellowship at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, after which she has stayed on as an attending. Her fellowship research project is titled “Evaluating Physician Attitudes of Family Presence during Resuscitation in India.” She has clinical experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. She has a particular interest in Quality Improvement and works closely with the Quality team within the Pediatric ER department. She also has an interest in Wellness/Burnout in both residency and medical school.
As co-director of GLOhBAL (Global Learning. Optimizing health. Building Alliances Locally) at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York, she oversees the program’s mission of providing inter-professional clinical and research training in global and immigrant health to pediatric residents and fellows through established partner sites in Kenya, India and North Dakota.
Anita Pillai, MD
Anita Pillai, MD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and attending physician in the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Department at Cohen Children’s Medical Center. She completed her pediatric residency at Nassau University Medical Center and continued on to complete her Pediatric Emergency fellowship at the Women and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo, NY. She worked as an attending physician in Buffalo after fellowship, where she served as Associate Fellowship Director for the Pediatric Emergency Medicine program and also as the Medical Director of the Pediatric Transport Team (STAT team) and then decided it was time to return home here in New Hyde Park, NY. Her interest in global health began when she had the opportunity to go to Haiti and work with disaster relief after the devastating earthquake in 2010.
She currently serves as co-director of the GLOhBAL team alongside Dr. Ronak Patel and Kelly Murphy where they hope to instill the core fundamentals of global and immigrant health to pediatric residents and fellows. Our partner sites in Kenya, India and North Dakota offer a robust selection of clinical sites for our academic trainees to experience global and public health at large.
Program Manager
Kelly Murphy, MPA
Kelly Murphy is the Program Manager for the Pediatric Global Health Program at Cohen Children’s Medical Center. She attended the University of New Hampshire where she received her undergraduate degree in Health Management and Policy. After graduating she worked at Boston Children's Hospital where her interests in public and global health began. She has a Masters in Public Administration from Pennsylvania State University. She has a background in qualitative research and is interested in global health, burnout, and technology in graduate medical education.
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In her role as the program manager for GLOhBAL (Global Learning. Optimizing health. Building Alliances Locally) at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York, she coordinates and develops the implementation of projects, programs and strategic initiatives to meet the program’s mission to increase access to and improve quality of healthcare delivery in order in an effort to eliminate inequalities in global child health through clinical service, education, research, public health and advocacy.