Webinar on Community Engagement in PHC

Speaker Profiles:
Dessalew Emaway is a Project Director at JSI’s L10K for the CIFF-funded HEP Performance Improvement project and the newly Gates awarded Improving Primary Health Care Service Delivery project. Dessalew has nearly 20 years of progressive experience in program management and technical leadership in community and primary health care systems; reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health; community engagement; and digital health programs. Before taking project leadership role at JSI, Dessalew served as Project Director at Marie Stopes International Ethiopia (MSI-E) for a DFID funded Family Planning project. Prior to the MSIE, he served at JSI/L10K as PHC team lead and RMNCH technical advisor and regional Manager positions. During his earlier careers, he also worked as reproductive health program at EngderHealth Ethiopia; and took different positions in the government health systems starting from health care facilities as primary health care director, health science college lecturer and reproductive health program officer at Amhara regional health bureau. Dessalew has a BSc from Alemaya University and an MPH degree from Addis Ababa University.
Kira Koch is a technical officer at WHO headquarters. She currently works in the Health Systems Governance and Financing Department. Her area of work focuses on health systems strengthening, performance assessments and participatory governance mechanisms to support countries on their path towards universal health coverage. She is a co-editor of the WHO handbook on social participation for universal health coverage which aims to provide practical guidance to policy-makers on how to meaningfully engage with the population, communities and civil society in health policy and decision-making processes. She received her M.Sc. Degree in Health Economics from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. She speaks English, French, Spanish and German.
Dougbeh Christopher Nyan is a Liberian medical doctor, biomedical research scientist, inventor and social activist. He earned his medical degree in human-medicine from the Medizinische Fakultät (Charité) der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Germany. Dr. Nyan has expertise in infectious disease research. He is the inventor of the US-patented rapid multiplex pathogens diagnostic test (the Nyan-Test) that detects and simultaneously identifies multiple infections in less than an hour. He was trained and also worked as scientist at the US National Institutes of Health and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. In 2014, Dr. Nyan testified before the US Congress on the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and served as member of the Data Safety Monitoring Board of the PREVAIL Ebola vaccine trials. Dr. Nyan has published in reputable scientific journals such as “Nature” (Scientific Reports) and is the winner of the 2017 African Innovation Special Prize for Social Impact for his invention. He is a member of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and the American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences (AAAS). He is currently active in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in the US and Africa as Member of the Maryland Medical Reserve Corps and the Diaspora COVID-19 Pandemic Focus Group. Dr. Nyan currently serves as Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of Shufflex Biomed, a diagnostic start-up company that develops rapid testing kits for infectious diseases. He was recently awarded his second US Patent for his inventions by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Rania Elessawi is a Social Behavior Change (SBC) Specialist with UNICEF Headquarters in New York. In this role, she supports development and provision of technical guidance for enhancing SBC quality programming In both development and emergency/humanitarian contexts, management and dissemination to UNICEF country and regional offices as well as external audiences, including development partners of results, evidence, and good practices in C4D programming. Prior to her New York assignment, she worked in Egypt, Afghanistan, Liberia, India, Yemen, and Sierra Leone.
As an international development professional that works to advance the agenda of children and youth through a human rights-based (especially child rights) approach. She has strong knowledge and understanding on application of results-based programming, with technical expertise in the areas of communication for development, water, sanitation, hygiene and health, environment, and child and young people’s participation, in addition to developing strategies and interventions for integration with child survival, child protection and education programs.
With 20 years’ experience applying human rights-based approach and results-based programming in development and humanitarian contexts, she specializes in mobilizing and establishing platforms for engagement and advocacy with national partners–government, non-governmental as well as donors. Her work has included facilitating social policy dialogues, establishing strategic partnerships, institutional strengthening, developing capacity-building programs for government and non-governmental partner and implementing participatory planning mechanisms. Her emergency/ humanitarian experience has been coordinating and strengthening Ebola response during the West African Ebola crisis, cholera response in conflict affected areas, as well as accountability to affected populations
Throughout her career she has gained progressive experience and developed strengths /technical skills in program and project development (including conceptualization, planning, implementation, management, monitoring and evaluation), as well as contributing to strategy development, partnership building and resource mobilization. She possesses strong interpersonal communication and coordination skills with multi-sectoral partners and stakeholders at the political level, as well as grassroots level, such as government, bilateral, international (i.e., USAID, EU, DfID) and other UN organizations (WHO), private sector, non-governmental organizations (i.e., IFRC, CARE, SAVE), research / consultancy institutions, and communities. Rania is skilled in managing and delivering results under stress, and is a self-motivated, committed ,and dependable team leader and player. This has contributed to her effectiveness in mobilizing resources among both the public and private sectors
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