Founding of GHGAPS
The world of governance, particularly in global health, is often a labyrinth to navigate, with fragmented education systems not offering the training capacities needed for students to fully understand how to contribute productively to the space. Recognizing the gap between global health scientists, policymakers, researchers, and educators to build leadership skills among students in the diplomacy forum, the co-founders of GHGAPS aimed to create an equitable space where youth seeking to engage in public service gain the universal abilities needed to do so.
Matthew Carvalho
Global Health '23
Matthew is a student researcher at Georgetown University and the first official youth delegate of the United States to the World Health Assembly. Specializing in planetary health law and diplomacy, Matthew has worked multiple jobs in the global health governance fields, including work for the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Capitol Hill, and the United States Department of Health and Human Services. He currently serves as a research assistant for the O’Neill Institute, as well as the inaugural policy fellow for the Planetary Health Alliance, based at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. He has served on delegations to the Working Group on the International Health Regulations, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body on a new pandemic preparedness instrument, and the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction at the United Nations. He serves as co-founder of the Global Health Governance as Public Service (GHGAPS) program, which aims to train students on global health and diplomacy, and leads them to the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland each year. His scholarly work, entitled "Reevaluating Global Health and International Law: The Relationship Between Regime Interaction and Legal Fragmentation Among Mechanisms Governing the Public Health Sphere," has awarded him commendations from environmental and global health legal experts across the globe, including a Fulbright Scholarship to be a Visiting Fellow at the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He released a textbook chapter on the nexus between ocean law and human health this last year. Matthew is currently pursuing a joint BS/MSc.GH at Georgetown's newly launched School of Health, and will be joining Georgetown University Law Center in fall of 2024.
Abigail Corrao
Human Science '24
Abigail Corrao joined Georgetown University in 2019, majoring in Human Science with a minor in Public Health. Over her time as a student researcher, she has explored a vested interest in the intersection between nutrition and mental health, with a focus on the Mediterranean diet. This passion led her to forge an international research project abroad, as a visiting scholar in the Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine at the University Hospital of Careggi in Florence, Italy. During this time, she devised and taught courses to fellow Georgetown University undergraduate students at the Villa Le Balze, on issues and controversies surrounding nutrition, food, and the science and practice of the Mediterranean diet. She returned to Georgetown as an internationally-recognized scholar, published in multiple journals and sharing her work at conferences across the globe. Abigail serves as the co-founder of the Global Health Governance as Public Service (GHGAPS) program, as well as the Acting Operational Chair of the GHGAPS Advisory Board. She is in the process of drafting a manual on global health diplomacy with scholars from the University of Oxford, and heading a new research project on the gut-brain axis and its long-term effects on well-being. She will graduate this May with a Bachelor’s of Science, and plans to use her strong research background and knowledge to move forward the most crucial areas for development in nutrition practice and literacy in academic and multilateral settings worldwide.