Maija Cheung
Maija Cheung
Why you chose your animal
Manta Ray - I have always been in awe of manta rays and their ability to navigate the seas. Their adaptability and strength and tendency towards discovery are characteristics I strive for
Biography
As the Global Lead for Surgery, Dr. Cheung will advise and support KidsOR global expansion, the direction of research projects, and the planning of the KidsOR advocacy campaign on global health. She has worked with KidsOR since it’s inception in 2017 and served as an International Advisory Board Member until assuming her new role in 2021.
With regard to her role, Dr. Cheung said “I couldn’t be more excited to assist with the incredibly impactful work at KidsOR. As a clinician and an academic interested in health systems strengthening, the overall mission of KidsOR is a departure from decades of mission-based interventions."
Dr. Cheung is currently an Assistant Professor in Surgery in the Division of Bariatrics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut. Dr. Cheung attended Middlebury College in Vermont where she majored in Geography with a focus on Middle Eastern Studies and then spent time living and studying in Amman, Jordan before her post-baccalaureate work in medicine.
Before medical school she worked with underserved populations in the United States on harm-reduction and infectious disease control strategies. This work led her to the National Institutes of Health in the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the Office of Global Research as a funded fellow to work on global public health research and developmental activities. Dr. Cheung graduated from Dartmouth Medical School in 2014. While at Dartmouth she spent a year directing research and clinical program development in Peru as part of the Dartmouth Center for Healthcare Delivery Science and assisting in humanitarian relief efforts in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
Dr. Cheung completed her General Surgery Residency at Yale New Haven Hospital and was the first Yale Global Surgery Research Fellow. Her research focused on capacity building and educational projects in paediatric surgery and trauma and emergency general surgery in Uganda. She completed her fellowship in Bariatrics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at Yale and stayed on as faculty. Her current research is focused on global trauma and children’s surgical outcomes, developing education, simulation, and training programs both in the United States and in low income countries, and building reciprocal clinical and research collaborations between international institutions.