In addition to making scientific advancements in the area of nutrition, Dr. Iannotti is working to address the need for local public health expertise in Haiti. She currently leads a partnership between The Public University of the North in Cap-Haitien (UPNCH) and Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) which has created Haiti’s first undergraduate degree program in public health.
A critical constraint on the implementation of needed public health and nutrition initiatives in Haiti is the lack of trained public health workers from Haiti. This gap results in many nongovernmental organizations employing foreign experts in public health, with minimal capacity building of Haitian public health workers or sustained impacts within public health systems.
The program launched in March 2017 and has two cohorts and a total of 86 students currently enrolled. The long-term vision of the UPNCH-WUSTL program and all of its partners is to use this degree program as a model that can be adopted by other universities within the network of Regional Public Universities throughout Haiti.
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