 Dr Laetitia Rispel |
Pretoria - The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has appointed Dr Laetitia Rispel, former Head of the Gauteng Health Department, as the Executive Director of its Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS and Health (SAHA) Research Programme. She will take up her position on 1 March and will be based in Pretoria. Dr Rispel replaces Dr Olive Shisana, who took over as President and CEO of the HSRC in August last year. Her leadership and management abilities in dealing with change and transformation of complex programmes in the health sector have been widely acknowledged. In 2003, she was the health category winner of the Shoprite/ Checkers/ SABC 2 Woman of the Year award. Dr Rispel has extensive experience in the public health sector, having worked for the Gauteng Health Department for the past nine years, first as a senior manager, and for the past five years as Head of the Department. She gained academic and research experience at the Centre for Health Policy, a research unit within the Wits University Department of Community Health, where she worked for eight years. She obtained a PhD in Health Systems from the University of the Witwatersrand, and a Masters in Community Health from the same university. In 2002, she completed a senior executive programme at Harvard University in conjunction with Wits University. Commenting on the appointment, Shisana said, "Dr Rispel's experience in public health and in implementing the comprehensive programme on HIV/AIDS in Gauteng will be immensely useful in further shaping the Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS and Health research programme of the HSRC. She will be able to formulate policy-relevant research questions". The SAHA programme conducts research on the social determinants of health, not only with regard to HIV/AIDS, but also for public health in general. This research goes beyond medical interventions and strives to address health problems at their source. Accordingly, the programme’s research focuses on aspects that enable or delay progress towards care, and prevent the mitigation of the impact of HIV/AIDS; health systems development necessary for disease control, and epidemiology and health policy programmes.
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