ABOUT ADEJOKE OPEYEMI-OGUNGBIRE (MPH)
Adejoke Opeyemi-Ogungbire is Founder, DESIRE Health Inclusive Organization, (DHIO) & EARnpreneurs, advisory council member and board member, Harvard Business Review and The Infection Prevention Strategy (Canada), respectively.
At DHIO, she is part of a dynamic & multidisciplinary team of volunteers working to redefine the experience of women, children, deaf communities and others with special needs in Nigeria
through innovation and technology to ensure Universal Health Care (UHC) and financial inclusion.
As a Public Health Specialist with over 15 years work experience, she continues to contribute to
global health through various work and partnerships with non-profit organizations and other civil society organizations and networks, promoting Universal Access to Healthcare.
Driven by passion, she has become an advocate for hard-to-reach and under-served populations in Nigeria where she has pioneered couple of development efforts locally and internationally in the area of infectious diseases and recently, disability inclusion.
Her career in community development in 2000 started during her Youth corps, with a project
focused on Early Childcare for pre-school aged children in a remote area in North Central Nigeria where motherhood and childhood were beset with poverty, improper infant & child feeding practices that led to increased child morbidity and mortality in the region coupled with
poor access to essential services such as education and health. She took up the challenge and changed the narrative for women and children in the state.
This earned her the State National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Governing Board Chairman’s award in 2001.
In March 2006, she joined an award-winning non-governmental organization, Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) as the training and Institution building officer (and later became Head of
the same unit) and contributed immensely to the organization’s growth while joining her colleagues to address challenges posed by HIV/AIDS, TB, Maternal/Child Health and related issues until June 2011 when she voluntarily resigned and started DESIRE Health Consult, a Public Health consulting outfit and more recently DESIRE Health Inclusive Organization.
At JAAIDS she was responsible for the management of specific projects as well as
training/capacity building of staff & stakeholders.
Some of the projects she managed included the American Jewish World Service funded projects, namely the Scaling up Treatment Access & Demand projects (1 & 2), Mentoring for Meaning Involvement of PLWHA (MMIPA 1 & 2), Advocacy for Anti Stigma Bill, among others. She also oversaw the implementation of its World Bank Supported projects (HIV/AIDS funding,
HAF 1 & 2) and some parts of the Ford Foundation supported project.
She was part of the editorial team of the popular E-forum (nigeria-aids.org) and Access Alert (HIV Treatment newsletter).
Adejoke has keen interests in the interaction between health and tech as well as financial inclusion.
She is a recipient of the prestigious award of the Department of State, TechWomen program and an alumnae of the United States Exchange Program.