Laetitia Rispel is a professor of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where she holds a Research Chair on the Health Workforce as part of the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI). She is an NRF rated researcher, whose research interests are in human resources for health and the performance of the health care system.
Professor Rispel has extensive management and leadership experience. She is both a former Head of the Gauteng Department of Health (2001-2006), and a former Head of the Wits School of Public Health (2012-2017).
Laetitia Rispel has won several national and international awards, including a prestigious Senior Africa Oxford Fellowship in acknowledgement of her wide-ranging research, teaching, and leadership expertise. She was president of the World Federation of Public Health Associations from 2018 to 2020, the first woman from Africa and the third in the history of the organisation to achieve this honour.
In December 2022, Professor Rispel was awarded a senior doctorate by the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as an honorary doctorate by the University of Cape Town.
