Research Fellows

Fortunate Chifamba is a native from Zimbabwe and she received a B.A in Biochemistry from Smith College in 2016. She has worked as a Graduate Research Fellow with Dr. Jonathan Lipton at Boston Children’s Hospital where the lab’s research seeks to understand the fundamental relationships between the circadian clock and diseases of the developing brain. Ms.  Chifamba is currently pursuing a Master of Public Health degree focusing on Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also completing a concentration in Maternal and Child Health through the school’s Maternal and Child Health Center of Excellence. As a Harvard Ministerial Leadership Fellow, Ms. Chifamba has consulted in a policy research fellowship in collaboration with the Zambian Ministry of Health on a project to address the root causes of maternal mortality in Zambia. She conducted field work in January 2020 where she provided strategic and technical support to evaluate the country’s maternal health programs giving recommendations to inform maternal health policies and procedures at the ministry. She will be working with the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi as one of two Mississippi Delta Fellows conducting research and literature review to inform the development of a Blueprint on behalf of Mississippi’s children designed to help improve their health and well-being outcomes.

Ms. Sun is currently pursuing her Masters of Public Health in global health with a certificate in leadership from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Immediately prior to starting her degree, she worked for eight months as a Program Coordinator for the Partnership for Health Advancement in Vietnam on projects relating to universal health coverage through primary healthcare, public private partnerships, and undergraduate medical education reform. In this position, she worked closely with organizational leadership and government, academic, and private sector partners. Prior to this position, Ms. Sun worked as a Research Technician in the Hung Lab at the Broad Institute, where she worked for two years to characterize the latent phase of M. Tuberculosis. Ms. Sun graduated magna cum laude from Williams College with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and concentration in public health, and as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi Honor Societies. 

As one of two Mississippi Delta Fellows working with the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi (CFM) this summer, Ms. Sun will conduct primary and secondary research on best practices and community priorities for children’s health in Mississippi. This research will result in a Blueprint for Children’s Health and Well-being and policy recommendations localized to the Mississippi context. She is interested in studying health inequities and vulnerable populations, health system inefficiencies, and design for social innovation.

David Bunn is excited to apply his passion for health equity and health disparity reduction to bolster the well-being and health of Mississippi’s children. In his role with the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi, he will be conducting research and designing a policy brief to inform the development of the Blueprint for Success.

David is currently pursuing a Masters of Public Health (MPH) focused on Health Policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). David received a Bachelor of Science in Biology in 2017 from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany and went on to Harvard Medical School to become a physician and advocate for his patients.

While in medical school, he noticed the systemic and structural barriers that prevented many patients from receiving adequate care. He consequently began conducting clinical research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital to examine issues around access to health care and drug coverage, telemedicine, and cardiovascular disease outcomes. These experiences reinforced his passion for ensuring health equity and reducing health disparities, and inspired him to obtain an MPH after his third year of medical school. Now, as an HSPH student, David focuses on better understanding the role of health policy in addressing and reducing the health care barriers that he saw his patients confront while in medical school.