Mrs. Mabel Kissiwah Asafo is the Acting Director of the Health Promotion Division. She is an alumna of the Kumasi Nurses Training College (1991, 1995), the University of Ghana (2004), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (2008), and the Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives, where she specialized in Women’s Health (2018). She is currently a PhD candidate in Maternal and Child Health Promotion. From October 2019 to October 2020, she served as a midwife clinician, academician, and researcher in women’s health at the Shai-Osudoku District Hospital in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana.
She began her career as a Staff Nurse and Staff Midwife at Bekwai Government Hospital in Ashanti Region and later at Tafo Government Hospital. In 2004, she joined the National Health Learning Materials Centre of the Human Resources for Health Directorate of the Ghana Health Service in Kumasi, where she served as a Programmes Officer in charge of health education and promotion and the development of health learning materials. Through this role, she honed her skills in writing, proofreading, and technical review. Her significant contributions to health promotion led to her appointment as the Regional Health Promotion Officer in the Ashanti Region, a position she held from August 2010 to 2015. During this period, she conducted several micro and mass media educational programmes through radio, television, and faith-based engagements on pressing health issues. She also served the Sickle Cell Association of Ghana, providing education, administrative, and psychological support to affected families. In collaboration with the Sickle Cell Foundation of Ghana (SCFG), she has contributed to training genetic counselors in the country.
Mrs. Asafo has extensive experience as a facilitator. She has served as a regional trainer in HIV counseling, testing, and prevention of mother-to-child transmission; a national trainer in education and counseling for sickle cell disease; and a trainer in family planning methods and utilization. Beyond facilitating training sessions, she has presented research findings at national and international conferences on sickle cell disease and HIV/AIDS. Her professional expertise has allowed her to mentor students as a preceptor during clinical placements and to teach basic nursing at Premier Nurses’ Training College from 2006 to 2008. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at the University of Ghana School of Public Health, where she facilitates stakeholder engagement in implementation research for the MSc Sexual and Reproductive Health course.
In research, Mabel K. Asafo served as the field coordinator and HIV testing and counseling coordinator for nine qualitative operations research projects on key populations funded by USAID and PEPFAR between 2011 and 2014. These projects explored topics such as HIV vulnerability and prevention needs of young female sex workers in Kumasi, female post-secondary students engaged in transactional sex, beliefs and behaviors of men who have sex with men (MSM) involved in substance use and transactional sex, and HIV vulnerability among male and female prisoners. She also worked on the retention of antiretroviral treatment for people living with HIV. With over a decade of qualitative research experience in HIV, Mabel has recently been involved in the GMSII study, a collaboration between KNUST and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa. Her research portfolio extends beyond HIV to include sickle cell disease and maternal health.
