Honoring the Memory of Alumna and Public Health Policy Expert Killed in Mali
Institute for Women’s Leadership hosts inaugural Anita Datar Lecture on Women’s Global Health
Anita Ashok Datar dedicated her adult life to championing the health and human rights of those most vulnerable.
The Rutgers alumna, a public health policy expert who worked around the globe with NGOs, was one of 21 people killed Nov. 20, 2015, during a terrorist attack in Bamako, Mali, where she was working to improve the region’s response to HIV/AIDS and reproductive health options.
So it’s a fitting tribute that the 1995 graduate’s legacy lives on in the first Anita Ashok Datar Lecture on Women’s Global Health: “Women’s Global Health and the Fight Against Poverty.” The lecture, established by the Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL), features Gayle E. Smith, president and CEO of the One Campaign at 7 p.m., Oct. 9, in Trayes Hall of the Douglass Student Center, 100 George St., New Brunswick. The lecture is open to the public and the Rutgers community.
A former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Obama Administration and special assistant to President Obama and President Clinton, Smith is one of the world's leading experts on global health and international development. She heads the ONE Campaign, a grassroots campaigning and advocacy organization with more than eight million people around the world taking action to end extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa.
Smith – selected by a committee comprised of leaders from across the university and Datar’s friends and family – is a fitting first speaker for a lecture series that bears Datar’s name, said Lisa Hetfield, interim director of IWL.
“Smith was the head of U.S. AID when they held the memorial for Anita. So she had met members of Anita’s family and spoke at the memorial,” said Hetfield. “She’s also a leader in this field of women’s global health and was so enthusiastic about connecting our students with the issues and ways they can be involved.”
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Datar was born in Pittsfield, Mass., and raised in Flanders, N.J., where she was an honors student. During her undergraduate years, Datar participated in Rutgers Summer Study Abroad in France, where her interest in public service blossomed.
After graduating with a psychology degree, Datar joined the Peace Corps and was stationed in Senegal. She traveled throughout the country, educating women and men on reproductive health, family planning and HIV prevention.
She returned to the United States to attend the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and earned dual master’s degrees in public health and public administration in 2002. Datar moved to Washington, D.C., and for more than a decade, cultivated expertise in health policy and program development in support of reproductive health, maternal child health, and HIV prevention and management in the developing world.
The annual Anita Ashok Datar Lecture on Women's Global Health, expected to draw groundbreaking pioneers, researchers, field workers and activists to campus, will explore growing international health challenges and the vital role that the United States and leaders from across the globe must continue to play in addressing them.
“We envision the lecture series as a resource to help forge a new understanding of women's global health challenges,” Hetfield said, “and as a potential catalyst for new collaborations across Rutgers to address these issues.”