Paige Passano, MPH

Paige Passano is a specialist with the Bixby Center and Senior Program Officer with the OASIS Initiative, with a special interest in the prevention of adverse health outcomes through high impact, multigenerational solutions such as girls’ education/empowerment and family planning. She joined the Bixby Center in the fall of 2007, after spending four years in Mumbai where she conceived of and managed a street-based HIV prevention project for Population Services International (PSI). In her first two years at the Bixby Center, she contributed to the design, implementation and evaluation of a maternal health intervention in northern Bangladesh. Eventually, shifting her focus from South Asia to Africa, she worked intensively for several years on a long running Bixby/Ahmadu Bello University collaboration in northern Nigeria that is increasing enrollment and retention of girls in school in order to expand opportunities for adolescent girls and to improve maternal health. In 2012, she joined the OASIS Initiative, she expanded her focus to the broader Sahel region. She is now developing the first Sahel Leadership Program, a capacity building and leadership development training program for mid-level professionals working in family planning, girls’ education and agricultural adaptation to climate change, as part of a larger effort to improve the resilience of agro-pastoralists living in the Sahel. Paige completed her MPH in International Public Health in New Orleans at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in 2002. Her current interest lies in the potential of integrated, cross-sectoral programs to achieve a much greater impact in women’s and children’s health.