Ellie leads Namati’s right to health program and is the director of Namati in Mozambique. Namati’s grassroots health advocates use legal empowerment to address injustice in public health services. They educate poor and vulnerable communities about key laws and policies and support them to raise their voices and seek redress for specific violations - walking alongside patients to overcome the social and structural barriers that undermine human dignity and access to health care. Over the past six years Namati has partnered with communities to resolve over 3,000 health-related grievances in Mozambique, contributing to concrete improvements in health worker performance, infrastructure, equipment, supplies and medicines. Namati then draws on data and learning from these cases to impact policy on a national scale.
Previously, Ellie worked with Partners in Health in Neno, Malawi, where she was Director of PIH’s Program on Social and Economic Rights. She launched the Clinton Foundation’s pediatric HIV/AIDS program in Malawi and worked in Nkwanta, Ghana with the Population Council and Ghana Health Service on scaling-up the national Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) initiative in an effort to decentralize primary health care and increase access among the rural poor. Ellie has been living in sub-Saharan Africa for the past 15 years. She holds a MSc in Maternal and Child Health from the Harvard School of Public Health and a BA from Northwestern University.
Eastern and Southern Africa
