Dr. Linda A. Vanotoo is an accomplished health systems and public health expert with over four decades of experience in clinical and public health practice. She has spent over 30 years providing thought and entrepreneurial leadership to staff, working with partners, funders, stakeholders, political leaders and communities. Within this period, she has supported development, implementation and research to strengthen health systems. She has built staff capacity and managed health information and logistics to improve the quality of health care and facilitate self-sustaining systems from the community to the national levels of health service delivery.
Dr. Vanotoo is a senior fellow at Results for Development (R4D). She previously oversaw the implementation of primary and community health workforce activities within the USAID-funded Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator (Accelerator) project to ensure equity in the recruitment, training, and financing of community health workforce. She provided thought leadership and contributed to strategy development, partner engagement, collaborative learning, and the use of digital innovation to build countries’ community health workforces for quality primary health care.
Before taking up the community and primary health care leadership position, Linda was R4D’s country director for Ghana. In that role, she successfully oversaw R4D’s large portfolio of work in Ghana, including supporting the Ghanaian government with their COVID-19 response and the scaling up of a nation-wide primary care network to improve health care for millions. She supported the harmonization and complete digitization of the process for assessment and accreditation of health facilities. She successfully supported the Ministry of Health’s research focused on health workers’ acceptance of working in hard-to-reach communities. She also supported the Ministry of Health in installing audio-visual equipment and holding the first hybrid health sector performance review summit. This support allowed participation of health workers from communities who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to participate in the review meeting. She supported the development and endorsement of the Essential Health Service package for Ghana as well as the development of the Health Information Strategic Plan to inform and guide data harmonization, governance, and interoperability of health information in Ghana.
Throughout her career, Linda has focused on strengthening health systems to ensure equity in quality health care at all levels. She is the founder of the Promote Maternal & Infant Survival Excellence (PROMISE) Initiative, which advocates making pregnancy a safer, more memorable experience and improving maternal and newborn survival. Linda also launched The Pregnancy School, an innovative antenatal program that disseminates information to improve communication between health workers, pregnant women and their families, ensuring male involvement. During the COVID, she introduced and continues to run, The Online Pregnancy School, an innovative online program that disseminates information via YouTube, Facebook and Health TV She has written 3 books: The Pregnancy School: Communicating with Pregnant Women and their Families, which have been used to train midwives and to set up other functional pregnancy schools, Promise from the Womb, which gives information on fetal growth and development; and The Grooms Manual designed to enhance male understanding and participation in family and reproductive health issues.
Prior to joining R4D, Linda was the regional director of health service for the Western and Greater Accra Regions, where she supervised planning and implementation of public health activities such as immunization, disease surveillance and control and management of disease outbreaks. She also previously served as the senior capacity development advisor for Evaluate for Health/USAID Ghana.
Dr. Vanotoo is a Fellow of the Ghana College of Physicians and currently coordinates the Family and Reproductive Health Course at the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons.
She holds a B.Sc. and MBChB from the University of Science and Technology, Ghana; a Master of Tropical Paediatrics degree from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine; an executive MBA from Ghana Institute of Public Administration and a Ph.D. in Public Health from the School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Legon. She also holds several certificates including applied epidemiology from Tufts University USA, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, USA and Kenyatta Medical Institute, Kenya.
