Seble L Frehywot, M.D., M.H.S.A.

Seble Lemma Frehywot is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Health Policy and the Department of Global Health.

Whether she is working in Asia, Africa or the United States, Dr. Seble brings in-depth knowledge of medicine, health systems and health policy to the challenges of building the health workforce and improving care to mothers and children. Her areas of current interest are health workforce and health systems development in low-resource countries, the use of the African medical Diaspora in health infrastructure development to expand in-country clinical training and policy analysis and research and interlinking her health workforce research to address the bottleneck issues associated with decreasing the Maternal Mortality in many low-resource countries. Since joining SPHHS in 2007, Dr. Seble has been conducting research on the global health workforce, with concentration on the continent of Africa particularly on the capacities of medical doctors, non-physician clinicians and community health workers.

Currently, she is the Principal Investigator (one of two) of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Coordinating Center NIH/HRSA grant, which serves as the coordinating center for evaluation, technical assistance and communication in regards to increasing capacity, retention and conducting country relevant research to over 26 medical schools in Sub-Saharan Africa and about 20 partnering medical schools in the U.S.A and Europe. Dr. Seble was Co-Principal Investigator for the Gates Foundation-Sub-Saharan African Medical Schools Study (SAMSS) Project, which was an in-depth site visit and survey study regarding the 169 medical schools in Sub-Saharan Africa on issues of capacity building, retention, and innovative practices. She has served and still serves as a WHO Technical Core Group member in the development of the World Health Organization’s global guidelines/guidance, namely the "Task-shifting Global Recommendation and Guidelines," the "Increasing Access to Health Workers in Remote and Rural Areas through Improved Retention," and future WHO guidelines on "Transformative Scaling-up of Medical and Nursing and Midwifery Education" and "Optimizing the Delivery of Key Interventions to attain MDG 4 and 5." She was also a Co-Principle Investigator on a Rockefeller Foundation study regarding developing a global framework for enumerating public health workforce and for inventorying public health training institutions. In prior positions, Dr. Seble provided technical HIV-related expertise to the Ethiopian government and conducted research and policy analysis on developmental delay disorders in children for the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the CDC. She teaches Global Comparative Health Systems course.

Doctor of Medicine, Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi, India, 1988
Master of Health Service Administration (Health Policy Analysis, Health Services Program Management), The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, 2004

PubH 6442: Comparative Health Systems and Policy, Department of Global Health

Dr. Seble's research focuses on health human resources and health systems development in developing countries, especially Africa.

Dr. Seble is a member of the American Association of University Women and the Medical Council of India, and a member of GW's Africa Center for Health and Human Security's Technical Advisory Board.