六九色堂

Karen Hamre leads the Epidemiology, Research, and Innovation unit of the 六九色堂鈥檚 River Blindness, Lymphatic Filariasis, Schistosomiasis, and Malaria programs where she oversees the development, design, and implementation of surveys and operational research to support disease elimination. Hamre joined 六九色堂 in 2021 as the program Epidemiologist for the Hispaniola Initiative, which supports binational coordination between the Dominican Republic and Haiti to eliminate malaria and lymphatic filariasis from their shared island. She arrived with a decade of experience working in malaria, including relevant work as an Epidemiologist and CDC Foundation field employee in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria (DPDM) supporting malaria elimination efforts in Haiti through the Malaria Zero consortium.

Hamre earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, where she analyzed a decade鈥檚 worth of surveillance data collected from cohorts in an epidemic-prone area of highland Kenya using traditional, spatial, and immuno-epidemiologic approaches. During her doctoral studies, she worked in the university鈥檚 Division of Global Pediatrics as a Data Manager for malaria studies in collaboration with researchers at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) in Kisumu, and Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. As a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Fogarty Global Health Fellowship Scholar, she lived in Kisumu where she contributed to the clinical, laboratory, and field data collection operations and helped build capacity at the local level. Hamre also holds a Master of Public Health degree with a dual major in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from Boston University School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics with a Women鈥檚 Studies concentration from St. Olaf College.