2019 MCH Young Professional Award Recipient

Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha, PhD, MPH, associate professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, was the recipient of the 2019 Maternal and Child Health Young Professional Award from the American Public Health Association (APHA). The award was present to Amutah-Onukagha by Aviva Must, dean of public health at Tufts School of Medicine, at the APHA Martha May Eliot Luncheon on Monday, November 4.

Amutah-Onukagha has distinguished herself as a leader in her community-based prevention work with major service positions. From 2014 to 2016, she served as the President of the Society for the Analysis of African American Public Health Issues (SAAPHI), a national public health organization that is an affiliate of the American Public Health Association. SAAPHI membership comprises researchers, physicians and health advocates dedicated to improving the overall health of African Americans. Under her leadership, Amutah-Onukagha developed and established an internship program, wrote and successfully procured a grant from the California Wellness Foundation, and revamped the organization’s policy and technology infrastructure. This past spring, she developed and taught an elective, Minority Women’s Health, to public health students in Tufts School of Medicine’s MD/MPH program. Amutah-Onukagha’s research seeks to address sexual risk behaviors in the adolescent daughters of African American mothers who are HIV positive. She uses mixed methods approaches to uncover intervention points and potential strategies to mitigate risk in this vulnerable population. This work is both interdisciplinary and translational, and Amutah-Onukagha has a well-considered research agenda that should provide a successful and highly impactful research trajectory.