Lumati Named Associate Director of Center for Global Surgery

Sep 1, 2024

Juliet Lumati, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Surgery (Surgical Oncology), has been named associate director of the Robert J. Havey, MD Institute for Global Health Center for Global Surgery. The appointment is effective September 1, 2024. 

Havey Institute for Global Health, the Center for Global Surgery, and the Department of Surgery are honored to share this exciting news with the Northwestern community.

Lumati earned her medical degree from University of California San Diego School of Medicine in the Program for Medical Education Health Equity and her Master of Public Health in Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. With a clinical practice in robotic hepatopancreaticobilliary surgery and GI surgical oncology at Northwestern, Lumati completed a Complex General Surgical Oncology Clinical Fellowship in the Division of Surgical Oncology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and general surgery residencies at The University of California San Francisco and The University of Alabama. 

Raised in Nigeria, Lumati now studies how health insurance schemes in similar communities in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are designed to improve access to surgical and oncologic care. Over the last decade, she has been involved in global health efforts, specifically focused on health care financing in SSA (Ghana and Nigeria). In the last four years, she has also worked as a part-time surgery consultant at Lakeshore Cancer Center, the first comprehensive cancer center in Nigeria. 

Lumati has built a rigorous career focused on addressing cost-related barriers to care both domestically and internationally. She has long-term plans to reduce the incidence of impoverishing expenditures for surgical and oncologic care in SSA by building bidirectional collaborations, training programs for SSA investigators and developing a portfolio of funding to scale interventions to address these cost-barriers to care. 

Additionally, she aspires to sponsor, support and develop the next generation of health services researchers in the context of global health by applying for training and development grants such as the D43 to scale up US and SSA expertise and workforce in this subject area. 

Hear more from Juliet Lumati, MD, MPH on her episode of Explore Global Health with Rob Murphy, MD

Lumati is the principal investigator on a clinical trial aimed at assessing the role of financial navigation in reducing financial distress for cancer patients in Nigeria, “Evaluating the Impact of Financial Navigation on Financial Toxicity and Treatment Adherence for Cancer Care: A Randomized Control Trial- COST-FIN,“ a study supported by the Havey Institute of Global Health Catalyzer Grant. 

As associate director, Lumati joins center director Fizan Abdullah, MD, PhD and fellow associate directors Roxanna Garcia, MD, MS, MPH and Hassan M.K. Ghomrawi, PhD, MPH in the Center for Global Surgery. 

On behalf of Havey Institute for Global Health, the Center for Global Surgery, and the Department of Surgery, please join us in congratulating Juliet Lumati on this new appointment. 

Sincerely, 

Fizan Abdullah, MD, PhD, Director, Center for Global Surgery, Robert J. Havey, MD Institute for Global Health 

Hasan Alam, MD, Chair, Department of Surgery 

Robert Havey, MD, Deputy Director, Robert J. Havey, MD Institute for Global Health 

Rob Murphy, MD, Executive Director, Robert J. Havey, MD Institute for Global Health