Nachela Chelwa is a public health advocate and implementation science research expert, with over twelve years of experience in research design and management, monitoring, and evaluation of multi-year health and development programs with major focus areas being adolescents and young people.
Nachela joined the Population Council is September 2015 and has served as Principal Investigator for a number of adolescent focused programs/studies with particular focus on access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). She has overseen implementation science research studies implemented in Zambia that, among others, assessed police preparedness for assisting survivors of sexual violence.
Much of her current work with adolescents involve managing NIH-funded studies that are testing health facility and community-based models for integrated service delivery for HIV and SRH including improving screening and early diagnosis for cancers among adolescents living with HIV.
Nachela’s expertise includes providing technical assistance for rollout of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) innovations tested as part of the Africa Regional SGBV Network (Partners include East Central and Southern Africa) .She is an expert trainer and facilitator for Monitoring and Evaluation, multidisciplinary management of SGBV survivors and Project Management.
Prior to joining the Council, Nachela served as Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Advisor for the $93million USAID-funded Sustainability through Economic Empowerment, Partnerships and Support for Orphans and Vulnerable Children and other vulnerable populations (STEPS-OVC) program that developed and managed a robust community-based information management system for over 600,000 OVC from across the Country.
She has served as an independent consultant for the Ministry of Health, assessing referral systems for health facility services including SGBV services within the Ministry of Health, supported the development of the National Action Plan (NAP) for GBV prevention and response in Zambia. This included mapping survivor centered support services such as medical, legal, and psychosocial support.
Nachela is a Moremi Initiative leadership development (MILEAD) 2011 fellow and a current recipient of the Population Council’s Accelerated Talent Development (ATDP) Fellow. She sits on several technical committees, especially in the Ministry of Health, looking at reproductive health, adolescent health and advocacy in the Country.
