Professor Laetitia Rispel – Public Health Systems: University of the Witwatersrand, and South African Research Chair for the Health Workforce

This week on Womanity-Women in Unity, in our series on women in medicine, Dr. Amaleya Goneos-Malka talks to Professor Laetitia Rispel who holds a South African Research Chair, entitled Research on the Health Workforce for Equity and Quality. She is a Professor of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is both a former Head of the Wits School of Public Health (2012-2017), and a former Head of the Gauteng Provincial Government Department of Health (2001-2006). She is also a past president of the World Federation of Public Health Associations (2018-2020). Prof Rispel shares some of the challenges and achievements along her journey to improve public health systems and shape health policy in post-apartheid South Africa. For example, being inspired to go to university but lacking the means to do so, yet serendipitously, at a rubbish dump of all places, seeing a pamphlet to study nursing at university – all expenses paid. Tune in for more…