Dr. Linda Mobula-Shufelt, Biochemistry BS, Class of 2004, and Her Journey as a Health Advocate and Humanitarian Hero

DR. LINDA MOBULA-SHUFELT

BIOCHEMISTRY BS, CLASS OF 2004,

AND HER JOURNEY AS A HEALTH ADVOCATE AND HUMANITARIAN HERO

By Olivia A. Mendoza

Dr. Mobula-Shufelt is currently a Senior Health Specialist with the World Bank. She formerly served as a Public Health and Infectious Disease Advisor with the former Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She also worked as a Hospitalist Physician with Johns Hopkins Community Physicians and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Dr. Mobula-Shufelt is serving as the Regional Surveillance Disease Enhancement (REDISSE IV) Regional Co-Team Leader for West and Central Africa, where she is working on improving preparedness for outbreaks. She served as the technical lead for the 10th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with the World Bank from 2019-2020. This outbreak was the largest in DRC, and challenging since it occurred during a time of conflict. As part of Dr. Mobula-Shufelt’s work with the former Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), which is now the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, she served as Public Health Advisor and Deputy Team Leader for the USAID/OFDA Ebola Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) in Guinea during the West Africa Ebola outbreak, and subsequently served as the Acting Senior Humanitarian Advisor for the USAID/OFDA Ebola response. She had previously provided clinical care to Ebola patients in Monrovia, Liberia, at the ELWA-2 Ebola Treatment Center with Samaritan’s Purse during the summer of 2014. From 2014-2017, she was the Co-Principal Investigator for the Gates-funded Ghana Access and Affordability Program, which aims to improve access to treatment for Non-Communicable Diseases.

While in Liberia, Dr. Mobula-Shufelt’s colleague, Dr. Kent Brantly, was the first American to contract Ebola. She says of her experience, “He had been treating patients in Monrovia in the summer of 2014, at a time when there was limited international assistance. Treating a colleague was quite an overwhelming experience. He was a physician like me and he had a family.

Photos courtesy of Linda Mobula-Shufelt

I thought he was going to die, and his family would lose him. At the time, we were all overcome by fear because nobody truly understood how the outbreak would spread. There was no proven cure and the case fatality rate was extremely high. I was the first to administer ZMapp, an experimental treatment that had only been given to monkeys in a laboratory setting. Since then, ZMapp and other experimental treatments were tested in a clinical trial. Dr. Brantly did recover. I have since spent time with him and his family where we reminisce about those challenges.” Dr. Mobula-Shufelt also served as the Chief Medical Officer for the Samaritan’s Purse response to the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and was the Senior Program Manager for the UNHCR funded Samaritan’s Purse European Refugee Response in Greece in 2016. She previously worked in the Office of HIV/AIDS at USAID providing technical assistance to South Sudan, DRC, Mozambique, and Burundi. Dr. Mobula-Shufelt shared, “I’m a first-generation American. My family is originally from the DRC. My parents moved to Arizona right before I was born and my father attended the University of Arizona, getting a Masters in Agricultural Economics and PhD in Economics.” When she was 9 years old, the family moved to Kinshasa, the capital city of DRC. A civil war broke out seven years later when the government was overthrown and rebels shut down access to water and electricity. While Kinshasa was largely spared from the conflict, the experiences of fear and desire to help others stuck with her. Dr. Mobula-Shufelt returned to the U.S. for college and medical school, but she knew she wanted to practice in low-income settings. She obtained a Bachelor of Science with Honors from the University of Arizona in 2004 and participated in the Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) Program from the University of Arizona, graduating in 2004, followed by medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. She obtained a Masters in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a concentration in Health in Crisis and Humanitarian assistance. Her medical residency in Internal Medicine took place at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, and she went on to complete a Post-doctoral Clinical Research Fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital. When Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010, Linda was compelled to volunteer her medical skills. She was moved by the patients she treated in Haiti’s largest slum, Cite Soleil. One of her trips coincided with the onset of a cholera outbreak, affecting thousands of Haitians. The cholera outbreak in Haiti was the perfect storm, occurring months after the devastating earthquake in areas with poor sanitation such as Cite Soleil. Cite Soleil was recently featured in the media when hundreds of individuals were killed as a result of gang violence. Dr. Mobula-Shufelt eventually moved to Haiti for a year, where she managed a primary care clinic, treated cholera patients, and established a maternal and child health program. She quickly realized she needed training in public health to have a broader impact in communities, in addition to helping at the individual level as a clinician.

Linda is now married and recently gave birth to a daughter, Trinity Grace Imani, in March of 2022. She and her family reside in both Kinshasa, DRC, and Montreal, Canada.

Linda (second from left) with Annie, Dr. Dorothee, Dr. Emilia, and Dr. Imaculée in Ituri, DRC, as DRC Ministry of Health, World Bank, WHO, and CDC respond to Ebola outbreak, September 2019 Iam thankful for my time at the University of Arizona where I received an incredible education and was mentored by amazing faculty. I am so thankful for the late Dr. Michael Wells, who graciously allowed me to work in his laboratory during my undergraduate years. I met him while taking a summer course my freshman year and he emphasized the importance of conducting research very early on. The Wells Lab in the Department of Biochemistry and many members of the Department (like Olivia Mendoza, James Pennington, April Stonehouse, and others) have continued to encourage me through the years and have been my biggest cheerleaders. Dr. Marc Tischler (MARC Program) and Dr. Carol Bender (UBRP) are other examples of incredible mentors that provided great support. I look back at my time at the University of Arizona with great fondness. It was a launching pad for a career of service in the area of humanitarian assistance and global health work. I would also like to thank Dr. Roger Fox, a Professor from Agricultural and Resource Economics, my father’s advisor, who also mentored me on how to pursue a career in International Development.