M. Sereen Thaddeus
Public health adviser worked in a number of African countries
M. Sereen Thaddeus, a public health adviser and consultant whose work took her to many African countries, died of acute myeloid leukemia Jan. 10 at her Butchers Hill home. She was 68.
“She was compassionate, committed and contributed a lot of integrity in both her personal relationships and work,” said Barbara A. Durr, a project director for JSI, a Boston-based global public health nonprofit. “She worked in health care planning and was a very important person.”
“She was known in the global public health community as an ardent champion of women’s health who focused on the underserved and vulnerable communities that did not have access to preventative health care and quality health services,” said her husband of 29 years, Noel L. Brown, a retired international health specialist, who also worked at JSI.
Maritza Sereen Thaddeus, who went by her middle name, was born and raised in Beirut. She was the daughter of a physician, Dr. Jacob Thaddeus, and Wadad Samaha Thaddeus, a homemaker.
After graduating from high school, she earned a bachelor’s degree in 1976 in anthropology from American University of Beirut, and the next year, moved to Philadelphia, where she obtained a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.
While at Columbia University, where she earned a master’s degree in 1993 in public health, she was the coauthor with Deborah Maine of “Too Far to Walk: Maternal Mortality in Context,” which was a “framework outlining the underlying factors of high maternal mortality,” her husband wrote in a
biographical profile.
“This novel framing still serves as a roadmap for high-impact maternal mortality programming worldwide and is often cited in journal articles, academic papers and courses of study,” Mr. Brown wrote.
From 1993 to 1995, Ms. Thaddeus worked for the Johns Hopkins program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics, and then for the next 12 years lived with her family on various overseas assignments for USAID and JSI in Morocco, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Niger and Uganda.
“Sereen was upbeat. She was an optimist and hardworking,” said Ms. Durr, who first met Ms. Thaddeus when she was in the Peace Corps in Morocco. They later worked together in Uganda.
“That was the beginning of the AIDS response and it was a very challenging time because so many were dying,” Ms. Durr said. “And Sereen always fought the good fight.”
“Colleagues fortunate to have worked with Sereen knew her as an exceptional professional and compassionate friend and that she was a tireless advocate for
human rights and social justice,” her husband wrote.
Her husband said she had a “sharp intellect” and was fluent in not only English, but also Arabic, French and Portuguese.
“She touched lives and inspired change wherever she went and loved Baltimore as her home base,” her husband wrote.
Ms. Thaddeus, who returned to Baltimore in 2017, later became a public health consultant to various agencies until her retirement in 2018. She was consulting on a parttime basis at her death, her husband said.
Their Butchers Hill home was known as a “sanctuary of warmth” and for her gracious hospitality, her husband said.
Ms. Thaddeus was a volunteer in her neighborhood and with her community association.
A private memorial service will be held in March.
In addition to her husband, Ms. Thaddeus is survived by a son, Jason M. Brown, of Butchers Hill; a stepdaughter, Eden Bishop, of Knoxville, Tennessee; a brother, David Thaddeus, of Charlotte, North Carolina; and two step-grandchildren.