This interview, conducted by by Nat Thomson, Simmons MSW Candidate, runs abridged in the March 2025 issue of the Simmons MPH Monthly. Edima Ottoho is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Public Health and an DrPH candidate at Boston University.

Hi Edima, it’s great to talk with you! One thing I thought was interesting about your experience and specializations was that you had incorporated project management training into your studies and then you work, so I was wondering if you could speak a bit about that, for starters?

Working in different public health oriented settings provided me with some pretty robust experience. Different intervention areas. Initially I had studied genetics and biotechnology. Then I pursued my MPH in Health Services Management. It seemed clear to me that one area that seemed to be a gap among public health practitioners is the leadership/management aspects of public health initiatives, programs, and such. That’s what led me to pursue a PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification. This was in order to take a more leadership oriented perspective on public health. I feel like [project management] and the operations and management side of things in public health are things that public health professionals might be less oriented around. As public health professionals grow into their technical expertise, they quickly have leadership pushed in their laps to handle as well, with little to no training to navigate that advanced phase of their career. Noticing this guided me early on to incorporate project management training into my skills and view on executing public health.

So then, would you recommend PMP certification and/or other operations and management perspectives to public health students and early professionals?

Yes. I would say even if someone cannot complete an MBA degree and/or PMP certification, it is good to pull this kind of thinking into their education and perspective. I’ve found it very helpful and once one starts to see the benefits of being more organized about the ways projects are run, the value becomes very clear. Also, having this knowledge and skill can make one stand out amongst other MPH holders.

That’s great stuff, I think you make a great point about how subject matter expertise and understanding organizational workings can be really complementary, especially in the context of a leadership orientation as a public health practitioner. I also wanted to be sure to ask you about the BU Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health, where you are a doctoral fellow.

The executive director at CISWH was one of my professors and so I got pulled in there. She knew that I had a project management background and an MBA. The organization wanted someone like this to be a thought partner around continuous development of the center itself, around putting structures and procedures in place. The center is a big hub for many renowned researchers, each doing their thing. Researchers in an academic setting can tend to operate in a very entrepreneurial manner but the vision for the center is not just be a workstation for many working on their own, but instead there is a lot of desire to get these researchers and academics speaking with one another and collaborating, like a proper organization. So, my role there is to work closely with the Executive Director to help think about ways to increase cohesion and integration within the center.

The focus of the center is social work, so I’d just be curious to hear you talk about the intersection of public health and social work a bit.

Overall, I’ve really come to appreciate the field of social work from the exposure in this role. I find social workers to be quite good at looking beyond just health systems. Social workers are quite good at looking at everything that affects health, what we call the social determinants of health; where you live, where you work, your community. As public health students, we get taught about social determinants of health, but we are not always told that there is a whole profession, social work, dedicated to it. So it’s become very clear to me now that I work at CISWH that social workers are the people who are experts in the social determinants of health, and I think we should partner more with them. I also hope more efforts around advocacy are done in a way that people can see the value that social workers bring to the table.

You are finishing up your doctorate at BU as well, is there anything you can share with us about your degree there or your focus?

My doctorate is a professional degree, a DrPH, Doctor of Public Health. This is quite different from a PhD, in that it is more practice-based and focused on leadership, management and policy. The goal around this degree is the creation of public health leaders.

Care to share anything about your dissertation topic and such?

The focus is women’s leadership in public health. Women make up about 70% of the global health workforce, but only a few, about 25%, make it to strategic leadership roles in global health. If you look just at women in low and middle income countries, that number drops to about 5%. It becomes a question of where all the women doing all the great work end up and why we’re not seeing the general rates reflected in the strategic leadership profile. Beyond that, there’s a question of what we’re surely missing out on by not having more women at the decision-making table. My specific focus in this area is mentorship models for women. While, of course, there are such programs out there, there aren’t many that have evaluated their effectiveness in ensuring leadership development/career advancement outcomes for the women mentees. So my work is focused on evaluating the effectiveness, beyond just the claims. If the goal of mentorship is to help women move into leadership roles in their careers, then we have to know whether or not that is happening and to what degree. The analysis would, at the end of the day, lead to the development of a framework for effective and sustainable implementation of future women-focused career mentorship programs.

For those less familiar with the concepts or point of view of global health, what might you recommend as ways to grow this perspective and/or pursue careers with a global POV?

Starting locally is a great first step. Starting with a local organization can really help get an understanding of what public health is all about. Participation in advocacy campaigns is another important one; These initiatives can really help one to understand the context that public health tends to exist in (e.g. economic, social, or political contexts). It also helps you to build your network of people and organizations and is a great way to find mentorship as well. Looking out for fellowship opportunities where you can work in other countries is another great way to expand a public health POV towards being more globally-informed. Another would be to work for organizations and projects that are multi-country oriented.

You started your career in Nigeria and came to the states to continue; could you speak a bit about this transition?

I got to a point in my career where I had sort of reached a saturation point and was not moving up, I was just circling around different projects and roles that didn’t feel challenging. I’ve always aspired to be a public health leader. Organizations I worked for in Nigeria were funded by the US, so I had seen that investment in public health and also knew that the US was where I would have the best public health education and resources. So that’s what led me to being at BU, in order to become the person I wanted to be, a public health leader.

How might you characterize public health leadership, for those more oriented around the academic side of things?

Well, being a professor is one of them. Another type of public health leadership would be the industry route, like being an organizational head, where you are involved in high-level decision making such as being involved in policy development and reviews. For example, working on committees developing policy at the global level, where guidelines for countries, broadly, are put together and dispersed for activation at the national level. As an Associate Professor of “Practice”, these are the types of things I am expected to be involved in to remain relevant and up-to-date with real-world public health efforts that I can apply in my teaching. I’m looking forward to more of these kinds of opportunities.

How might you draw connections between leadership and advocacy, an important part of the MPH program here at Simmons?

Because public health intersects so heavily with public policy and politics, advocacy is critical to public health leadership, I would say. You constantly have to make the case for “why?” Why is this problem or this initiative important to people and sometimes to the economy? Leadership and advocacy are both the act of saying “this is an important issue that should be prioritized for the following reasons.” Means of advocacy are important skills to learn and to continue to practice, especially in a leadership role.

Has any of your work, past or present, been impacted by the new administration’s series of executive orders oriented around pulling funding?

Not my current work, but the organizations I worked with in Nigeria have been negatively impacted budget-wise, unfortunately. I have a pretty clear picture of how the eliminations of these funding sources from the US impact things at the global level, which is sad. I understand that it’s argued that countries need to take ownership of their things and I don’t feel entitled to US taxpayer money, you know, but the US and these countries had been partners for over 20 years and systems had been developed based on this foundation. There was also a formula that had developed over time around the sharing of funding and responsibilities, with a mix of US government funding and programs alongside local philanthropies or a global organization like The Global Fund, World Bank for HIV, TB, and malaria and some other programs. Now, with the pause of U.S funding, that arrangement has been significantly disrupted.

There are ethical principles in public health - beneficence and non-maleficence. These mean, the benefits must always outweigh the risks, and do no harm. This is the lens through which I view things and make decisions as a leader. For instance, a lot of harm could be caused by ending a program with only 24 hours notice, as opposed to three or six months notice. Ending a program in 24 hours would be considered an unethical way to conduct public health business. So in many instances it’s not the ending of a program, but the abrupt manner of ending a program that creates the most problematic scenarios, as you can imagine. More traditionally, even if funding was ending, one would get something like six months to transition to another plan and source of funding. This is held as the humane and decent way to go about things. So now we see sick patients, poor patients as the ones who will suffer on account of the changes in policy and funding, not the government, not the wealthy. So that aspect is really sad. There are millions of people who are heavily dependent on medications, treatments and services being provided out of the funding.

Lastly, back to the topic of women in public health leadership roles for a bit, are there any learnings or proven approaches in service of elevating more women into leadership positions?

The literature tends to indicate that mentorship works well, however I think perhaps women are over-mentored and could use something more like sponsorship in service of providing opportunities for roles, not simply just mentorship alone. Support in the form of recommendation for specific roles, versus just general direction on career approach, how to improve their resume and such. The way society is today, women have grown to be less assertive in comparison to men. So, when it comes to negotiating salary or promotions, women are shown to be less willing to sell their skills and the value they bring. If you look at how men tend to operate, you see more informal career-oriented networks and engaging through social avenues. There’s just more of a culture amongst men around connecting with one another regarding career advancement and such. Women are lacking in this type of networking. Biology surely plays a role here in culture, with women being the primary caregiver as the one giving birth. Maternity leave inevitably leads to career interruption or downshifts, given the state of current organizational policies and such. Women are forced to make tough decisions regarding career or family in ways that men are not.

Thanks to Edima for taking some time out of her work to chat!