Jane Halpern

Title: Study Physician

Location: Gallup, NMNavajo Nation

Biography

Jane joined the Center for Indigenous Health in September of 2018 as a study physician with the Infectious Disease Team in Gallup, NM. She has worked on the PCV15 vaccine trial, the Melody RSV study and, most recently, the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and Vaxelis vaccine trials. Jane’s interest in improving the health of underserved communities is long-standing.

Jane worked as Director of Health Services at Towson University in Baltimore for 30 years, where she implemented vaccine requirements for incoming students, established annual flu vaccine clinics on campus, managed outbreaks of meningitis, and began reproductive health services for women students. In 1999 she began working with the Johns Hopkins Center for Immunization Research on clinical trials of vaccines for enteric diseases in Guatemala and Mexico, and on the Pediatric Pfizer COVID vaccine trial in Baltimore.

She received her MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and did a Family Practice Residency at UC-Davis in Sacramento, after which she trained Nurse Practitioners in a UC-Davis program to work in urban underserved areas. Because of her interest in public health, she moved to Baltimore to attend Johns Hopkins/Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she completed a Preventive Medicine Residency, an MPH and a DrPH.

Jane spends 5 months a year in Santa Fe. She enjoys gardening, cooking, and music, especially classical and jazz. She volunteers for the annual SF chamber music festival and International Folk Art Market, attends the Santa Fe Opera, jazz concerts, and loves taking her dog Nizhoni, adopted from the SF Animal Shelter in 2021, to the dog park.