The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health recently announced Kathleen Kahn as a recipient of the 2020 Alumni Award of Merit.
Kathy, who received her Masters in Public Health from Harvard in 1988, was recognized for her outstanding career and contributions in public health in South Africa and abroad with this acknowledgement:
Kathleen Kahn has devoted 30 years of public health practice to advancing the health and well-being of often-marginalized rural populations in South Africa and beyond. She partners with communities, public-sector departments, and collaborating investigators to undertake excellent, ethical, and community-sensitive research and elevates rural priorities to policy and decision makers. She has been a senior adviser on issues of rural health and equity and has investigated and shed light on such divergent problems as HIV prevention, mental health, and metabolic disease, focusing on vulnerable adolescents and how to mitigate risk and foster resilience. She has highlighted issues that others have overlooked, such as the problem of young children dying before their parents—a global concern magnified in the epidemic period of HIV/AIDS. Kathy has contributed substantially to building the next generation of African researchers and is acknowledged as among the most accomplished epidemiologists and health scientists in Africa.
Watch video describing Kathy’s work and accomplishments.
Alisha Wade: received a 5-year K43 Career Development award from the Fogarty Centre of the National Institutes of Health, USA (2017-22)
Ryan Wagner: appointed Secretary, Epidemiology Commission, International League Against Epilepsy, and co-chair, Economic Burden of Epilepsy Task Force, International League Against Epilepsy (2017 – 21)
NGONI NGWARAI RECEIVES WITS COVID-19 HERO ACCOLADE
In December 2021, Ngoni Ngwarai, Assistant Director of Systems and Operations at received the COVID-19 HERO award for his work in setting up a Covid Response Team at the unit, setting up a call centre for research, drawing up a rotational work schedule – all of which was to keep operations running but also to ensure that everyone’s personal safety would come first
Mark Collinson awarded the SA Research Infrastructure Roadmap grant to the value of R99 million was awarded to Collinson, and team he led, by the Department of Science and Innovation for the establishment of seven health and demographic surveillance sites in South Africa (2016-18); renewed (2019-22)