PLENARY SPEAKERS - TUESDAY Dr Vishwajeet Kumar Vishwajeet Kumar is a physician from India with advanced public health training from Johns Hopkins University where he subsequently served on its faculty. His scientific work focuses on developing and evaluating solutions to improve the health and survival of mothers, newborns and children. His earliest work on community-based behaviour change management demonstrated a 54% reduction in newborn deaths and has informed the global strategy for newborn survival. D. Kumar has authored the “Behaviour Change Management” approach to guide the design of programs to achieve accelerated behavior change and targeted epidemiological impact. He is a proponent of community-centric design to ‘enculturate’ scientific advancements within traditional communities. Dr Kumar founded the Community Empowerment Lab - a community embedded global co-laboratory in rural Uttar Pradesh, the ground zero of global health challenges. This collaboratory includes 3500 villages, a multi-disciplinary team, global partnerships and multiple behavioural research projects. This collaboratory serves as a platform to take the lab to the land, and foster global and local conversations to co-create just and lasting solutions at the confluence of science and local wisdom. Dr Kumar is currently leading an effort to scale-up Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) across 80+ health facilities in Uttar Pradesh, India, which will eventually provide a blueprint for scale throughout the Indian health system. Along with Dr Atul Gawande at Harvard University, he is studying the integration and impact of a safe birthing checklist as a behaviour change management intervention for reducing harm to new-borns and mothers in over 100 Primary Health Centres in India. He has also lead efforts to integrate behaviour change management approaches within 250,000 women self-help groups for new-born health and survival and continues to understand its impact at scale. Dr Kumar is a recipient of several global Grand Challenges awards and a Rockefeller Foundation award on Human Behaviour. He has been awarded the Asia 21 Young Global Leaders Fellowship, the LMA National Young Achievers Award for transformational public service leadership, and is a member of the GE Global Insights Network of global thought leaders. He has published widely in international peer-reviewed journals including The Lancet, and is a member of several global and national advisory boards including the Global Alliance for Vaccine Initiative. Dr Kumar is a featured TEDx speaker and has shared the stage with global luminaries to give talks on child health and community-centered design and innovation. Dr Kumar is deeply passionate about mentoring future global health and public service leaders. Dr Leonard Kabongo Leonard Kabongo received a Medical degree at the University of Lubumbashi in 2004 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has since practiced Medicine in the DRC, neighbouring Zambia and now in Namibia. He is currently completing a Master degree in Global Health at Manchester University in the United Kingdom. His research interest focuses on the evaluation of standard clinical practices in maternal and new-born health. He is an advocate for patient safety and quality improvement focus on maternal /new-born care, Obstetric surgery and Anaesthesia. He is a fellow of the International Society for Quality in Healthcare and Ariadne Labs. He is involved in global projects with the Lifebox foundation and Better Birth program which he introduced in Namibia. He is a Master trainer of Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Namibia. A quality improvement champion who has adapted and used extensively safe surgery and safe childbirth checklists to promote quality improvement culture and Organizational change at Gobabis Hospital and beyond. His work has been presented in various National and international conferences focused on quality improvement and patient safety. Dr Kabongo is the Senior Medical Officer at Gobabis Hospital in Namibia, an Institution that is been transformed through various quality improvement projects and collaborations.
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