Full biography

Imo Chinasa is an international development and global health strategist. With over eight years’ experience working directly on health interventions that strengthen women, children, and adolescent reproductive health and rights. She has worked in various capacities for various Local and International organizations, designing and implementing health programs suitable for low-resourced and volatile settings. She is currently a Kiphart Research Fellow at the University of Chicago Centre for Global Health.

She worked for Options Consultancy Services – Evidence for Action-MamaYe, a program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, previously as the Nigeria country Communications Officer and then transitioned to a program management role as the Niger State Advisor – Working closely with the state Ministry of Health, Civil Society Organizations, The Media, and other relevant health actors to strengthen systems that improve maternal and newborn health, drive social accountability that gives access to citizen’s participation in health planning and implementation. She provided hands-on technical support in building capacities of the coalition to actively participate in budget development processes, track health implementation, identify gaps and priority issues for health funding and engage with policymakers in evidence-based advocacies for improved outcomes. 

In her effort to reducing maternal and newborn mortality, she has supported the ministries of health to set up Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response-MPDSR in line with the World health Organization-WHO mandate for countries with high burden of maternal and newborn mortality to establish a surveillance and response system to track, review and respond to highly preventable occurrences that lead to death during childbirth, then use outcomes from the reviews for health financial planning. For instance, in Niger state, the MPDSR system has been established in all the 23 secondary healthcare facilities.

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These systems have seen practical impact in the quality of care being delivered in health facilities, for instance, the linking of service delivery to health financing has led to improved availability of life-saving consumables (Misoprostol, oxytocin, magnesium sulfate, etc.), and skilled healthcare personnel in the health facilities across the states where the program is implemented. 

With the outbreak of coronavirus in Nigeria, she deployed her risk communications skills to support the Niger state Rapid Response Team, to carry out a rapid assessment of the state’s level of preparedness and use the information to design preventive measures and sensitization programs that will help to slow down the infection transmission rate, without disruption to basic healthcare services in health facilities.
 

She volunteered during the Ebola outbreak in Nigeria as a Communications and Social Mobilization officers, supporting the emergency response by using various media platforms to engage and educate citizens with Ebola preventive messages, she also worked with relevant stakeholders to design various intervention strategies and interpersonal communication materials used for community outreaches.

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The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control-NCDC seconded her to the African Union as a Humanitarian Affairs and Communications Officer for the Ebola response in Sierra Leone- there she played a broader role, working with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Social Welfare, the World Food Program and UNICEF in Tonkolili district to provide psychosocial support to affected families, community engagement, reintegration of survivors, child protection services, family tracing, and reintegration, distribution of relief packages to families under quarantine, etc.

As a two time ONE Campaign Africa Champion, she has engaged in various advocacies on health financing to promote Pro-poor health policies, in 2016 she was part of the ONE Africa youth delegates that lobbied for the replenishment of the global fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria intervention during the OECD ministerial council summit in France.

In Nigerian, she is also part of the coalition of advocates who advocated for improved health financing through the investment of at least one percent statutory allocation to healthcare to implement the National Health Act.

This yielded results in the allocation of 1% Consolidated Revenue Fund for Basic healthcare in Nigeria’s annual budget for 2018/19 and 2020. With this, Nigeria can work towards the achievement of universal health coverage-UHC for all citizens.
 

Aside from health, Chinasa is also interested in youths and women empowerment through sustainable agricultural enterprise, this motivated her to co-found a pan-African initiative called African Youth Employment Initiatives; she and her partners are using this platform to empower young people in rural communities across countries in Africa (Ghana, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Burundi, Malawi, Tanzania, and the Central Africa Republic) where access to land is not difficult.

They use innovative agricultural systems and practices to design sustainable career path for young people, while also solving food insecurity in Africa.

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The organization has been recognized by the Ghana Ministry of Youth Empowerment as one of the organizations providing sustainable solutions for unemployment in the Ashanti region where they operate a large Demo-farm (supported by the African Union), and the UN Civil Society Climate Action for the use of renewable energy and new technology for fish farming.

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The impact of their work has also gained lots of momentum as the organization is currently sitting on the youth advisory board of the Africa Development Bank and has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Affairs- ECOSOC.

Chinasa holds a Masters of Art in International Development and Policy from the University of Chicago; majoring in global health and administration policy, A Masters of Art in Diplomacy and Strategic Studies from the University of Lagos; majoring in intra-state conflict and conflict resolution, a Bachelor of Science Degree in Public Administration majoring in human relations and project management, she also has a National Diploma in Public Administration and Management from Abia State Polytechnics, Nigeria and a certificate in Policy Development and Advocacy for Global Health at the University of Washington, Department of Global Health.

Chinasa is a GPHAP Fellow at the Crown School of Social Welfare – University of Chicago, A Young African Leadership Initiative -YALI Fellow, an Ashoka Fellow and has won multiple awards for her contributions to the eradication of Ebola in West Africa and for her commitment to reducing extreme poverty in Africa.

Chinasa is not all work and no fun, she loves traveling, dancing, and listening to music, she explores cooking whenever she wants to unwind, and love using documentary photography to tell human angle stories, now and then she writes blogs and articles on broad development issues.