Dr Da Costa Aboagye Inducted Into Ghana Leadership Hall Of Fame
Ghana Health Service’s Director of Health Promotion, Dr Da Costa Aboagye has been inducted into the Ghana leadership hall of fame after winning the National Health Leader of the year at the Ghana Leadership Awards. The award seeks to celebrate and recognise the most outstanding and exemplary leadership that positively impacts the development of Ghana and Africa.
Leader of the group Rev. Professor Emmanuel Nash says Dr Da Costa Aboagye has proven himself and deserves the recognition. “Looking at Dr Aboagye’s work and his quality leadership exemplary as President of ECOWAS RCCE network for the 15 member ECOWAS states, as Chairman of Public Health risk communication and community engagement for Africa and as Director of Health Promotion at the Ghana Health Service of the Ministry of Health”
Rev. Professor Emmanuel Nash noted that Dr Aboagye is such an industrious son of Ghana, making such a huge impact across the continent and he must be celebrated and honoured.
PROFILE OF DR DA-COSTA ABOAGYE.
The Director of Ghana Health Service’s Health Promotion Division, Dr. Da-Costa Aboagye is a global and national figure in Risk Communication and Community Engagement in public health and pandemic preparedness. He led Ghana’s national risk communication efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic and created a national risk communication and misinformation taskforce for COVID-19. Dr Aboagye supervised Ghana’s national risk communication strategy for covid-19 and decentralised the risk communication committees across many districts to better prepare for the next pandemic. He also created an effective community grievance redress mechanism system for covid-19.
Dr Da costa Aboagye is the current President of the ECOWAS Risk Communication and Community Engagement(RCCE) network within the West Africa Health Organisation with a responsibility to facilitate experience sharing, advocacy, learning, and promotion of better health through building stronger risk communication systems in the 15 ECOWAS member states.
In Africa, Dr Aboagye chairs the Africa CDC Public Health Risk Communication and Community Engagements(PH-RCCE) community of practice for the 55 member states to promote best practices, continuous learning and knowledge exchange among African countries, and to further provide strategic leadership and coordination for public health risk communication and community engagement initiatives in the continent and institutionalize PH-RCCE as an essential part of public health interventions in Africa.
He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy of England and Wales, an international consultant, an external examiner for both the University of Salford and the London Metropolitan University. Dr. Aboagye holds a BSc Degree in Chemistry (University of Cape Coast), MSc in Public Health and Environmental Health (Leeds Beckett University), PhD in Health and Wellbeing with research focused on National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana (Leeds Beckett University). Prior to being appointed Director of Health Promotion in 2019, he worked as a Cohort Leader and Lecturer at the University of West London, United Kingdom from 2017. He is also a reviewer for the Global Health Promotion Journal and a researcher with over twelve impactful scholarly publications to his name.
Leveraging on the creative industry to promote health, Dr Aboagye supervises a very popular health promotion drama entertainment series called You Only Live Once (YOLO) through Farmhouse production. The series uses popular Ghanaian celebrities and young casts to disseminate health messages in the areas of Covid-19, family health, maternal and child health, youth empowerment, reproductive and sexual health, HIV and malaria reaching over 10million youth on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and about 3.5 million viewers on television set every Friday in Ghana.
In 2021, Dr Aboagye was nominated to be a member of the Partnership for Evidence-Based Response to COVID-19, a consortium made up of organizations such as the World Economic Forum, African Union, Resolve to Save Lives, the World Health Organization and private sector actors. He was later designated by the consortium to present research evidence on human impact, public health, and social measures in Africa.
In 2022, the United States Government through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched a new, five-year $29 million partnership with Dr. Aboagye’s division of the Ghana Health Service to support the widespread adoption of life-saving health behaviours across Ghana. Under the leadership of Dr. Aboagye, the project continues to produce many successes including a launch of a National Health Promotion Strategy for Ghana.
He has received many prestigious awards and citations including the MTN Young Professionals Role Model in Health, Gold Category, in 2020, and the Golden Citizen Award in 2021, conferred on him by the Traditional Authority of Kumawu-Bodomase for his humanitarian work.
More recently, his work won him the highest award of the Republic of Ghana called Order of Volta – companion category for his role and sacrifices during Ghana’s Covid-19 response.
