Current Visiting Leaders

The Forum has been host to a diverse group of international leaders who used their time here to advance their own initiatives to improve health outcomes through collective problem solving, while also taking part in Forum initiatives.

Our Visiting Leaders to date have experience in a broad range of initiatives in health systems around the globe. The Forum continues to offer opportunities for leaders from research and health system stakeholder communities, as well as from the media, to spend time at McMaster University to enhance their efforts to meet pressing health challenges creatively.

To view information on past leaders, click here.

Pierre Ongolo-Zogo
January - December 2012

Director, Center for the Development of Best Practices in Health,
Head of Radiology and Medical Imaging Service, Yaoundé Central Hospital
Senior Lecturer, University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon, Africa

+ 237 (77) 934941
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Center for the Development of Best Practices in Health
Yaoundé Central Hospital
rue Henri Dunant, PO Box 5604
Yaoundé, Cameroon

Pierre Ongolo-Zogo, a leading health systems researcher in the African nation of Cameroon who has extensive involvement at the international level with strengthening health systems and supporting evidence-informed policymaking, is studying in McMaster University’s Health Policy PhD program throughout 2012.

His training at McMaster is part of an exchange agreement with Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, that was established as part of the $1 million International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Research Chair in Evidence-Informed Health Policies and Systems held by Nelson Sewankambo, principal of the College of Health Sciences at Makerere, and McMaster Health Forum Director John Lavis.

Ongolo-Zogo holds an MD, a fellowship in radiology and medical imaging, and a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, all from universities in France. He is also chair of the knowledge translation and policy committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group, and the WHO-sponsored Evidence-Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet) Africa Steering Committee.

His main research interest is in knowledge translation. He is also interested in the areas of healthcare delivery and multidisciplinary research in health and population studies. He was the founding director of the Division of Health Operations Research, Cameroon Ministry of Public Health, during which time he conceived and implemented a national commission on health research.

While pursuing his doctoral studies at McMaster and Makerere University, he is on leave from his positions as founder and director of the Center for Development of Best Practices in Health, and chief of radiology and the medical imaging unit, at Yaoundé Central Hospital, and as a senior lecturer, Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, at University of Yaounde I.

This is Ongolo-Zogo’s second visit with the Forum. He also spent a month at the Forum in 2009, during which time he participated in research meetings related to the monitoring and evaluation of knowledge-translation platforms in low- and middle-income countries, took part in policy dialogues convened by the McMaster Health Forum, and developed a better understanding of Canadian health systems.