Hanzhang Xu, PhD, RN is an Assistant Professor at Duke University with a joint appointment in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health and School of Nursing. She is also a Senior Fellow at Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, a Faculty Affiliate at the Duke Global Health Institute, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Duke Kunshan University. As a geriatric nursing scientist and a health services researcher, her program of research falls under two themes: (i) addressing health disparities in cognitive aging among older adults from a global perspective; and (ii) integrating patient-reported factors to promote outcomes in older adults with cardiovascular disease. She is also interested in using digital technology to promote disease management in older patients with chronic disease. Currently Dr. Xu is the Principal Investigator on multiple projects funded by the National Institute of Health and the American Heart Association. These research projects leverage the strengths of electronic health records (EHR), Medicare claims, and national and international survey data to improve the cardiovascular and brain health of older adults through a lens of equity. Her ongoing work in these areas is exemplified with more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier journals in nursing, gerontology, and cardiovascular research. These studies have received extensive international media coverage, including in TIME, Forbes, and WebMD. In the past few years, she has also received several awards and honors such as the Huffman Splane Emerging Nurse Scholar and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) AGING Initiative Multiple Chronic Conditions Scholar.

Dr. John Ji is an Associate Professor at Vanke School of Public Health, Tsinghua University, and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Global Health Research Center at Duke Kunshan University. He received his bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University and his doctoral degree in environmental epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health. John has worked with large observational cohort studies on environmental determinants (heavy metals, air pollution, green space) of mortality and morbidities. He has used biomarkers and remote sensing for environmental exposure assessment. He has published in The Lancet Planetary Health, International Journal of Epidemiology, and Environmental Health Perspectives. He is currently interested in climate change and health, aging, and brain health.

Dr. Weixi Jiang is currently a Youth Research Associate in the Department of Health Economics, School of Public Health, Fudan University. She obtained her Ph.D degree in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Amsterdam in 2021. Prior to joining Fudan, she was a research analyst at the Global Health Research Center of Duke Kunshan University. Dr. Weixi Jiang’s current research examines health system, health policy and intervention through a mixed-method approach, especially in the area of infectious disease control, healthcare financing and payment, and evidence-based traditional Chinese medicine.

Dr Jinkou (Button) Zhao is a senior specialist for evaluation and impact at the Global Fund. He has extensive experiences in the field of nutrition, infectious diseases, and chronic diseases as a range of professional roles from a junior epidemiologist to Department Director at Jiangsu provincial CDC, to a Chief for Strategic Information at U.S. CDC, a senior advisor at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a senior technical expert at the Global Fund over the past 36 years. Dr Zhao was trained as a physician, with a MSc in epidemiology and biostatistics, and a PhD in epidemiology. He teaches epidemiology at Nanjing Medical University, Wageningen University in the Netherland, University of Geneva in Switzerland and Oxford University in UK. He supervised more than 20 Masters or PhD students and published more than 260 articles including more than 100 on peer-reviewed journals.