Peter Waiswa

Prof. Peter Waiswa is a global leader dedicated to advancing maternal, newborn, and child health through research, policy advocacy, and capacity-building. His work over the years has been centered on creating sustainable, community-driven health solutions that leave a lasting impact. Prof. Waiswa believes that African academia and experts must lead the charge to address Africa’s unique health challenges, creating sustainable solutions through collaboration and innovation areas that overlap CEDIL Global’s mission. In 2013, Prof. Waiswa founded the Makerere University Centre of Excellence for Maternal Newborn & Child Health. This initiative has become a hub for cutting-edge research, policy influence, and capacity building, addressing critical health challenges across Africa and beyond.

Prof. Waiswa is also a health systems researcher with a particular focus on newborn health and development, and maternal-newborn-child health services. And his research and program interests in low- and middle-income countries have comprised health systems research that spans policy analysis, implementation and operations research, and how well these are linked to programming. He is also involved in various community initiatives especially on the African continent and has served as a board member of regional and global initiatives including at Adara Development USA, and as member to the World Health Organization (WHO) advisory group among others. He has been part of many strategic policies and initiatives, and he is a leading African academic with over two hundred publications including books. He was also a member of Uganda’s National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) whose findings have informed Uganda’s Financing Plan for Immunization, the Uganda Immunization Act, and the Uganda New Vaccines Introduction Plan, with the associated scale up strategies.

Globally, Prof. Waiswa is/has participated regularly in an advisory role to WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, International Pediatric Association, East African Community, African Academy of Sciences. Prof. Waiswa holds a joint PhD degree from Karolinska Institutet and Makerere University and is senior faculty member at Makerere University School of Public Health, Uganda, as well as Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.