Laetitia Rispel

Laetitia Rispel is an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in Health Systems at Oxford University. She is Professor of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she holds a Research Chair on the Health Workforce (also known as human resources for health) as part of the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI).  This is the first Research Chair at a South African or African University to focus exclusively on the health workforce. Her research interests are in human resources for health, specifically analysis of the labour market, performance of the health workforce, and leadership, management and governance and their intersection with the health system.

Laetitia Rispel has a PhD from Wits University (1998); a DSc (Med) from Wits University (2022), and an honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town (2022). She has won several national and international awards, including a prestigious Senior Africa Oxford Fellowship in acknowledgement of her wide-ranging research, teaching, and leadership expertise. She was president of the World Federation of Public Health Associations from 2018 to 2020, the first woman from Africa and the third in the history of the organisation to achieve this honour. Professor Rispel is an inaugural member of the International Academy of Quality and Safety under the auspices of the International Society for Quality in Health Care. In 2024, she became a member of the World Health Organization’s Expert Advisory Group to review the Code on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel.