William E

William E. Bertrand, Ph.D.

Dr. Bertrand is Co-Director of the CDMHA and also director of the Payson Center for International Development and Technology Transfer at Tulane University. Dr. Bertrand has served as Vice President of Institutional Planning, Research and Innovation at Tulane University. He holds an endowed chair in public health and has served as Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Chair and Founder of the Dept. of International Health. He has been involved in the study of disasters and the disaster to development continuum since the mid 1970's. He became one of the early users of information technology in the social and health sciences and has maintained this interest to date. Dr. Bertrand pioneered the use of microcomputers in Africa in the early 1980's by setting up one of the first computer based surveillance and information systems in Niger and in other Central African Countries. Based on a model he developed and pilot tested in the early 1980's in Bolivia Dr. Bertrand was one of the developers of the USAID Famine Early Warning System which has operated for nearly 15 years now as an effective early warning information system predicting disasters in Africa. He has been one of the first to apply information technology to higher education in the United States and abroad. Dr. Bertrand has served as consultant to such organizations as the World Bank, USAID, the Inter-American Development Bank, Kenya's Ministry of Health and the Haitian School of Public Health. In addition, he has done substantial research in the field of public health in Latin America and Africa, in areas of disease and nutritional surveillance, health policy and planning and the integration of new information technology into the social sector. Dr. Bertrand has over 60 scientific publications and over 200 presentations at professional meetings or advanced seminars.