Leadership
Ndola Prata, MD, MSc(link is external)
Dr. Prata is the Director of the Bixby Center for Population, Health & Sustainability(link is external), Co-Director of Center of Expertise on Women’s Health, Gender, and Empowerment(link is external), a Professor in Residence in Maternal and Child Health and the second holder of the Fred H. Bixby Endowed Chair in Population and Family Planning in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. She is a physician and medical demographer from Angola. She earned her medical degree from the University of Angola and an MSc in medical demography from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She practiced medicine in Angola for 10 years and served as head of the Social Statistics Department at the National Institute of Statistics of Angola. Shortly after moving to the US to begin her tenure as a researcher and lecturer at UC Berkeley, she also served as a demographer/analyst for the Centers for Disease Control's Division of Reproductive Health for six years, a role she resumed briefly from 2010 to 2011.
Her research focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of maternal, sexual and reproductive health interventions that maximize distribution and financing to increase access to care, contraceptives and abortion in developing countries, particularly for underserved populations. Her projects investigate strategies for harnessing existing resources, including human capacity and health care infrastructure while also gathering evidence for setting priorities on national health agendas. She leads research and programs for youth that seek to understand how interventions influence adolescent girls’ outcomes and to empower girls to make healthy choices. In addition to her current research in sub-Saharan Africa, Dr. Prata has conducted projects in Latin America and Central and South Asia.