Creating Public Health Measures that Respect and Engage Communities

Creating Public Health Measures that Respect and Engage Communities

Public health measures and recommendations only work when they are adopted by communities and ingrained into every day life. Occasionally, the public health measures advised or recommended do not line up with community values or cultures, creating tension between local governments and those receiving public health recommendations, and creating a lower chance the recommendations will be adopted. How can public health measures be created to encourage behavioral change while respecting the culture and tradition of a specific ethnic or cultural group? Join us for a conversation on how leaders can build community trust and engagement by creating localized public health measures.

Linda Mobula, MD, MPH is a Senior Health Specialist with the World Bank. She formally served as a Public Health and Infectious Disease advisor with the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She also works as an Associate with the Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

She recently served as the technical lead for the 10th outbreak Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the World Bank. She provided clinical care to Ebola patients in Monrovia, Liberia at the ELWA-2 Ebola Treatment Center with Samaritan’s Purse during the summer of 2014.  She served as a Public Health Advisor and Deputy Team Leader for the USAID/OFDA Ebola Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) in Guinea, and subsequently served as the Acting Senior Humanitarian Advisor for the USAID/OFDA Ebola response in Guinea. 

She also served as the Chief Medical Officer for the Samaritan’s Purse response to the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and was the Senior Program Manager for the UNHCR funded Samaritan’s Purse European Refugee Response in Greece in 2016. She previously worked in the Office of HIV/AIDS at USAID where she provided technical assistance to South Sudan, DRC, Mozambique, and Burundi.

Mobula received a Masters in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a concentration in Health in Crisis and Humanitarian assistance. She completed residency in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and completed a Post-Doctoral fellowship in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital.