Dr Kopano Mabaso
South Africa
Occupational Information
Job Title: Public health doctor and Founding Executive Director of the Grow Great Campaign
Professional History
Dr Kopano Matlwa Mabaso is a public health physician and novelist who is leading the Grow Great Campaign - a campaign aimed at galvanizing South Africa to achieve zero stunting by 2030. The organisation she leads highlights the dismaying statistic that one in four South African children under the age of five are stunted. Stunted children perform worse at school; are more likely to be unemployed as adults; are at higher risk of getting diseases like diabetes and hypertension; and are vulnerable to being trapped in inter-generational cycles of poverty. She says that this is unjust, as stunting is completely preventable.
From 2014 to 2018, Kopano served as an elected board member of Health Systems Global, the first international membership organization fully dedicated to promoting health systems research and knowledge translation. Kopano is also one of the InterAcademy Medical Panel's Young Physician Leaders.
Outside of her public health work, Kopano is a published fiction writer and the winner of the European Literary Award (2007) and joint winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa (2010). Her three novels, Coconut, Spilt Milk, and Period Pain are social commentaries on post-apartheid South Africa. They have received over a dozen international rights deals. Period Pain (also known as Evening Primrose in the UK & USA) was in 2017/18 shortlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Award, the South African Literary Awards, and South Africa’s Humanities & Social Sciences Awards.
In 2008 and 2009 Dr. Kopano was singled out as one of 300 young South Africans ‘you must take to lunch’ by the Mail & Guardian Newspaper and in 2011 was selected as one of Glamour Magazine’s women of the year. In 2016 she was selected as one of South Africa’s 21 icons and a short film was created about her work and aired on SA's national broadcaster. She is a Rhodes Scholar and alumnus of the University of Oxford where she gained both her Masters in Global Health Science and a PhD in Public Health. Kopano was recently honoured as one of Bill Gate's Heroes, and profiled on his blog, Gates Notes. In addition, she was awarded the 2019 Emerging Leader Award in the South African Health Excellence Awards and selected as one of News 24's Young Mandela. Kopano is an Aspen New Voices Fellow and in the latter capacity, won the 2015 Aspen Idea Award.
She has done a TED Talk titled When a moonshot falls short and a Tutu Talk titled The Quiet Enabler - Trusting your truth. Tutu Talks are a collaboration between AFLI and the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.
Qualifications
MBChB degree awarded with distinction University of Cape Town
MSc in Global Health Science at the University of Oxford
Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, UCT, 2009
PhD in Public Health, Oxford
Programme
2015 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow
Additional Tags: Medicine, Health, Science, Physician, Author
