Tom Nicholson, B.A., MIDP – specializes in designing and launching strategic initiatives in global health, with a focus on projects built on solidarity, mutual assistance, and eliminating causes of early death and injury. He holds an appointment as Associate in Research at the Duke Center for International Development (DCID), at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, with a focus on equity, supply chain integration, and policy innovation in the global response to drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). His publications focus on human rights and health, mutual aid, and integrated health systems.
Nicholson serves on the Board of Directors for the Global Health Council in Washington DC, the preeminent global health association in the United States, representing thousands of organizations who set policy and implement global health programs. He serves on the audit committee and is vice-chair of the membership and development committee.
He is an Expert on Mission from the United Nations, in their Office for Project Services, serving as international technical consultant (ICAIII). In this capacity, he travels to India, Ukraine, and other countries advising governments and partners on health delivery program strengthening. Nicholson co-founded and is Executive Director of Advance Access & Delivery (AA&D), a global NGO focused on health care delivery in challenging settings, which is the secretariat of the Zero TB Initiative and Zero TB Cities Project. AA&D has projects and partners in six countries providing health care delivery for diabetes, hypertension, tuberculosis, and HIV. Nicholson worked for 9 years for Partners In Health, and while there he was a Project Director for a 5-year population health grant from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s African Health Initiative (AHI) to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Partners in Health, Harvard Medical School, the National University of Rwanda – School of Public Health, and the Rwandan Ministry of Health. This project recorded some of the most rapid declines in infant and maternal mortality ever rigorously recorded. Prior to this, he managed and coordinated international multidrug-resistant tuberculosis projects in the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union with Partners on Health and has been involved in global TB policy discussions since 2005. He holds a Master of International Development Policy (MIDP) from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and a BA in Political Science from Indiana University – Bloomington. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School in 2013.
