Addressing the Complexities of Improving Public Health

Alumni, College/University Partners, Education & Research, Health & Medicine, Interview/Profile

Francis Poitier, wearing a blue blazer and white button-down, sits at a conference table and listens intently to something offscreen.

“I initially wanted to become a physician,” writes Francis Poitier (Bahamas, Pearson College UWC, University of Richmond ’14), “but it was at UR where I got my first taste of public health, and that helped me realize that I can make a broad impact.”

Pursuing that impact, he earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in international public health from the University of Leeds in the UK, where he became a postgraduate researcher focusing on gender and health in small island developing nations. His doctoral project used an intersectional approach to examine the persistence of obesity in his home nation — and that led to his current role as a teaching fellow in international health at the University of Leeds.

Francis is working with the World Health Organization to develop a planning tool for maternal, newborn, and adolescent health that can address inequities in reaching vulnerable and marginalized communities at the subdistrict level. He also developed an award-winning intervention that focuses on building community and student support within the Ph.D. student cohort at his university’s School of Medicine.

“I view health as the result of multiple compounding and intersecting issues,” he writes. “It is not just about individual human behavior but also about how various factors (such as politics, education, the environment, climate, etc.) come together to influence health and illness.”

This profile is part of the “Graduates in Action” series from the 2024 Annual Report.

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