PANEL DISCUSSION
April Sabangan is the CEO and founding member of Mission:BRAIN Foundation. She is an Operating Room Nurse specializing in Neurosurgery at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center and has been practicing for over 20 years. She's been deeply involved in training nurses and residents for many years and has received the Teaching and Service Awards. She is a member of the University of California San Francisco Department of Neurosurgery's Diversity Committee. As part of this effort, she is also the O.R. liaison and mentor for the Oasis for Girls, a program devoted to providing girls 14-17 years old with exposure to health care and STEM careers. Ms. Sabangan's pursuit of improving access to educational opportunities has also led to her involvement with Backpacks for the Future. She serves on the board of this nonprofit that provides backpacks with school supplies to grade school children in rural areas in the Philippines. Additionally, she's worked as an operating room capacity-building volunteer in Ethiopia with Footsteps to Healing and as a project liaison for a blood banking project in the Philippines with Global Healing. She has also volunteered with Operation Rainbow in Haiti and Habitat for Humanity in Jordan. Born and raised in the Philippines, she received her Nursing education and training in a large public hospital caring for some of the poorest in the country. Her first-hand experience in healthcare delivery disparities has galvanized her commitment to improving access and quality of care in underserved and underdeveloped areas. She is currently completing her graduate degree in Public Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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Mike M. Mallah, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the MUSC Department of Surgery where he functions as a trauma/acute care surgeon and surgical critical care intensivist. He is the Director of the MUSC Global Surgery Program which he started in 2022. Prior to joining faculty, he completed his medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, residency training at Carolinas Medical Center, and fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University. During his medical and surgical training, Dr. Mallah spent approximately three years in international healthcare consulting at McKinsey & Company in Dubai where he worked with multiple C-suite executives and government Health Ministers to solve complex international healthcare problems. Dr. Mallah has a strong passion for global surgery and surgical education. He has won several teaching awards, has traveled to over 55 countries, and operated on five continents working with the International Red Cross and Red Cresent, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and numerous smaller NGOs.
