Biography

I grew up in rural Ghana without running water and electricity, and experienced first-hand the health inequities that plague such underserved communities, especially in times of pandemics like COVID-19. These experiences led me to pursue undergraduate and graduate studies in Biology, and NonProfit Leadership, respectively, at the University of Pennsylvania, and later, an MPH at Yale. Over the past four years, I have been working with my colleagues at Cocoa360, a global health nonprofit I founded, to leverage community resources such as cocoa to improve social determinants of health such as healthcare and educational access. Building on our work thus far, my PhD research will address questions pertaining to the impact of using community engagement and farm revenues to eliminate low cost barriers such as health insurance premiums and user fees, on health outcomes and healthcare services utilization. Findings will guide the rigorous scale of our model across Ghana, and further inform the development of similar universal health financing interventions to improve health outcomes around the world.

Previous Education

Yale University Public Health 2020
University of Pennsylvania NonProfit Leadership 2019
University of Pennsylvania Biology 2015