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Kristina Talbert-Slagle, PhD

Assistant Professor
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Additional Titles

Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

Associate Director of Faculty Mentorship and Academic Programs, Yale Institute for Global Health

About

Titles

Assistant Professor

Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Associate Director of Faculty Mentorship and Academic Programs, Yale Institute for Global Health

Biography

Dr. Talbert-Slagle is an Assistant Professor of General Internal Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, a Core Faculty member at the Equity Research and Innovation Center, and Director of the Faculty Support Initiative at the Yale Institute for Global Health. She is a global health scholar and educator, focused on addressing global health and educational disparities through high-quality, interactive teaching and locally-appropriate and responsive scholarship and field programs. With doctoral training in genetics and virology and postdoctoral training in complex systems and global health management and health systems strengthening, Dr. Talbert-Slagle approaches her work, teaching, and mentorship through an interdisciplinary perspective.

Dr. Talbert-Slagle is part of a long-standing, trusting partnership with colleagues from the University of Liberia and Liberian Ministry of Health to establish permanent academic programs and systems to fulfill Liberia's goals for strengthening its health workforce. She is the principal investigator for Applying Research for a Healthy Liberia, a five-year, $15 million collaborative project with the University of Liberia and Vanderbilt University, funded by USAID, which has established a Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation, as well as permanent academic and financial management systems at the University of Liberia College of Health Sciences. She has also served as the faculty director for Health Management and Preclinical Education workforce capacity-building programs in Liberia, collaborating closely with colleagues at Yale and in Liberia, and the Yale lead for an undergraduate medical education curriculum review at Liberia’s only medical school, A.M. Dogliotti College of Medicine.

At Yale, she has developed and taught a variety of courses including a gateway global health course for undergraduate students, as well as seminars focused on global health research and practice, HIV/AIDS, and the role of water in infectious disease spread. In 2016, Dr. Talbert-Slagle was honored with the Yale Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching. Dr. Talbert-Slagle received her B.S. and B.A. degrees from the University of Kentucky and her Ph.D. from Yale University.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

Global Health Postdoctoral Fellow
Yale University (2012)
PhD
Yale School of Public Health (2010)
BS
University of Kentucky, Agricultural Biotechnology (2001)
BA
University of Kentucky, Russian and Eastern Studies (2001)

Research

Overview

My scholarly work is interdisciplinary, and reflects my own path through genetics, virology, immunology, global health, and health systems strengthening. Throughout my doctoral training in basic biological sciences (especially genetics and virology) with my postdoctoral training in mathematical modeling, health policy, and global health. I have focused examining the interplay between social systems and infectious disease. My research trajectory began in the basic sciences, with dissertation research examining how a tiny, unique protein could independently alter the growth behavior of certain cells. As a postdoctoral fellow, I analyzed parallels between infection dynamics among a population of cells inside the body and in a population of people in the world. My ongoing interest in the parallels and interdependencies of molecular and social systems eventually became an interest in the interplay between health systems and the emergence of infectious diseases.

Because I worked with an outstanding global health team at Yale, I had the opportunity to participate in Liberia's efforts to rebuild its health workforce post-Ebola, which brought together my understanding of virology and basic sciences with my interest in how social systems, including health systems, impact health and disease.

Since 2015, I have worked closely with Dr. Bernice Dahn, former Minister of Health of Liberia and current Vice President for Health Sciences at the University of Liberia, and many other academic and health leaders in Liberia, to help rebuild Liberia's health workforce post-Ebola. Our team's efforts have included a longstanding focus on understanding needs, challenges, and priorities in Liberia, and developing strategies to meet those priorities through capacity-building activities such as educational programs, curriculum review, professional development mentorship, and strengthening institutional systems.

My main focus in all of my work is to follow the lead of our partners in Liberia, and to invert the power relationships so often seen in traditional global health partnerships. We thus try to develop our research projects and questions in collaboration with our whole team, with a focus on learning how best to meet the needs of Liberia's health workforce, how best to address challenges in resource-constrained settings, and how to maintain a partnership that is meaningfully aware of power and resource differentials and that remains focused on collaborative problem-solving and fulfilling the goals of partners in Liberia.


Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome; Disease Transmission, Infectious; Global Health; Health Services Research; Public-Private Sector Partnerships; Systems Theory

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Kristina Talbert-Slagle's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

2014

2013

2012

2009

2008

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • honor

    Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching

  • activity

    Lessons on Counterinsurgency from the Human Body

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