The Guttmacher Institute is pleased to announce Akanni Akinyemi, PhD, MSc, and Adesegun Fatusi, PhD, MPH, as recipients of the 2021−2022 Bixby International Leadership Fellowship. This year, Guttmacher’s Bixby Committee chose to name two fellows: one, following the conventions of past Bixby Leadership Awards, who will collaborate on ongoing international projects (Dr. Akinyemi), the second will focus on building equitable international partnerships (Dr. Fatusi).
Dr. Akinyemi is a Nigeria-based researcher in sexual and reproductive health and professor of demography and social statistics at Obafemi Awolowo University. During his fellowship, Dr. Akinyemi will provide substantive and methodological expertise to Guttmacher research relating to misoprostol use and quality of care in Nigeria. He will also work on a project relating to capacity-strengthening in low- and middle-income countries, in which he will identify knowledge gaps, recruit young scholars as mentees and determine strategies for strengthening abortion research capacity in Nigeria. In addition to this collaboration, Dr. Akinyemi will work with Guttmacher staff on other capacity-strengthening initiatives in Nigeria and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Fatusi is a professor of community medicine and public health, and vice chancellor of the University of Medical Sciences in Ondo, Nigeria’s first specialized medical university and the third such institution in Africa. He also serves as the chief executive officer of the Paaneah Foundation (https://paaneahfoundation.org/) and is on the board of more than a dozen youth-focused nonprofits in Nigeria. He served as the director of international research at the Guttmacher Institute between 2019 and 2020. In addition to his globally recognized expertise in youth and adolescent sexual and reproductive health, Dr. Fatusi has extensive experience forming and strengthening international partnerships. As part of his fellowship, Dr. Fatusi will collaborate with Guttmacher staff to build tools, guidelines and processes to sharpen Guttmacher’s strategy for equitable partnerships.
The Bixby International Leadership Fellowship was established in 2007 through a grant from the Fred H. Bixby Foundation. The fellowships are awarded to people who have in-depth knowledge in the field of population and reproductive health and who can provide guidance on substantive and methodological areas of the Institute’s international work. Fellows benefit from exposure to Guttmacher’s expert staff and build their knowledge base and experience, particularly by learning more about Guttmacher’s model of integrating rigorous scientific inquiry with advocacy and public education.
The 2007−2020 Fellows (and their positions at that time) are listed below:
2020: Alex Ezeh, Professor of Global Health at Drexel University’s Dornslife School of Public Health
2019: Nohan Arum Romadlona, Project Manager at the University of Indonesia Faculty of Public Health
2018: Easmon Otupiri, Professor and Foundation Dean, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology- School of Public Health, Ghana
2017: Chander Shekhar, Professor, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), India
2016: Patrick Kayembe, Head of the Dept of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, U of Kinshasa School of Public Health, DRC
2015: Estelle Sidze, Associate Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), Kenya
2014: Mahesh Puri, Associate Director, Centre for Research on Environment Health and Population Activities (CREHPA), Nepal
2013: Amadou Hassane Sylla, Technical Advisor, Centre de Recherche pour le Développement (CRDH), Senegal
2012: Sabine Musange, Assistant Lecturer, School of Public Health at the National University of Rwanda
2011: Altaf Hossain, Director of the Bangladesh Association for the Prevention of Septic Abortion (BAPSA)
2010: Paulin Basinga, Lecturer and Deputy Director of Research and Consultancies, Department of Reproductive Health, School of Public Health, National University of Rwanda
2009: Idrissa Kabore, Senior Researcher and Director of Demography Program, Institut Superieur des Sciences de la Population/Institute of Science and Population (ISSP), University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
2008: Isaac F. Adewole, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
2007: Fatima Juarez, Professor and Researcher, Center of Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies, El Colegio de Mexico and Felix Limbani, Program Manager, Youth Net and Counseling-Malawi