Regional Vice President Spotlight - Sub Saharan Africa

IAAH Regional Vice-President for Sub-Saharan Africa, Adesegun Fatusi, is a Nigerian Physician and Professor of Community Medicine and Public Health. His areas of academic and professional focus are adolescent health and development; sexual, reproductive and maternal health; and health systems leadership. With over two decades at the forefront of adolescent health development efforts in Nigeria, Fatusi is currently the Vice Chancellor of Nigeria’s first specialized medical and health tertiary educational institution, the University of Medical Sciences, Ondo, and serves as the Chair of Nigeria’s National Technical Working Group on Adolescent Health (2006-current). Prior to this appointment, he was the Director of International Research with the Guttmacher Institute, New York (USA).

Fatusi served as an advisor to UNFPA’s programme in Nigeria (1996 – 2001), where he provided technical leadership and helped to develop the first sets of strategy and implementation guidelines for adolescent health services, along with creating a national reproductive health agenda. Fatusi is a Fellow of the West African College of Physicians (in Community Health), and holds the degrees of MBChB (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-ife, Nigeria), MPH (Hebrew University, Israel), and PhD (University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria). With a strong evidence-based background in public health practice and policy development, Fatusi has served as the lead consultant for several national and country level Nigerian studies, such as the National Study on School Health and National AIDS and Reproductive Health Survey along with the LearningPlus Project and Global Early Adolescent Student (GEAS). He is a member of the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, current Chair of the GEAS Advisory Board, and has consulted with WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF, and UNDP.

In addition to policy development, Fatusi is also passionate about curriculum development, having partnered with experts in Ghana to create a modular course in adolescent sexual and reproductive health (2016) and Namibia’s National Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2018). He was the founding Director of the annual “Adolescent Health in sub-Saharan Africa” short course and serves as a facilitator in the  “Short Course on Adolescent Health in Low and Middle-Income Countries” hosted by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and WHO.

Fatusi serves on advisory boards for more than a dozen adolescent/youth-related non-profits in Nigeria, formed the youth-led Campus Health and Rights Initiative (CHRI) at OAU, and is the founder of and holds leadership positions in the Academy for Health Development (AHEAD), Ile-Ife, Osun State; Paaneah Foundation, Ota, Ogun State; and the RAAOFAT Centre, Ejigbo, Lagos State. He spearheaded the formation of the Society for Adolescent and Young People’s Health in Nigeria (SAYPHIN), and under his leadership as National President, SAYPHIN organised Nigeria’s first National Conference on Adolescent Health in 2019. He is also leading the effort for Nigeria’s second national Conference, which will be held concurrently with the 1st African Regional Conference on Adolescent and Youth Health on 18 – 21 August 2021 in Abuja, Nigeria.