Population Council Research that makes a difference

Nafissatou Diop

Associate II & Country Director

Nafissatou Diop is country director of the Population Council’s Senegal office. Diop has over 25 years of international work experience in 14 countries. Her expertise has been in public health with emphasis on HIV and AIDS, family planning and reproductive health, strategic evaluation, and immunization issues.  

Before joining the Council, Diop was a senior program specialist at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), based in Canada. At the IDRC, she used her experience and expertise in research and evaluation to develop the evaluation strategy and lead evaluation activities of the Global Health Research Initiative—a global health research funding partnership of IDRC and four other Canadian government agencies. During her tenure, she also managed the Canadian International Immunization Initiative for Haiti (CIII2-Haiti), a five-year operations research program that funds activities designed to promote a better understanding of immunization-related issues, encourage and support innovative approaches to improve immunization rates among hard-to-reach groups, and strengthen research capacity in Haiti.

Prior to IDRC, she was a faculty member of the Department of Health, Behavior and Society of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2006–2008), and also worked at the school’s Center for Communication Programs, where she conducted research in Africa and Haiti (2001–2008).

Diop holds an M.H.S. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.