Jessica Kritz

Dr. Jessica Kritz serves as an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University's School of Health and Director of the Initiative on Health and Peace, where she specializes in participatory action research focused on resolving complex health challenges. Her groundbreaking work includes a significant long-term research project in Ghana's largest urban slum, Old Fadama, where she developed an innovative cross-sector collaboration model that has successfully addressed public health challenges since 2015. Through her research, which has engaged over 300 core stakeholders and benefited more than 8,000 people, she has pioneered low-cost, locally-designed interventions that have been successfully replicated across various communities in Ghana. Her expertise spans public administration, health policy, and law, with particular emphasis on uniting vulnerable communities with necessary systems for sustainable change. Dr. Kritz's work has expanded to include research on e-waste workers, fisherfolk, and environmental health issues, while also contributing to global studies on green transition through the GOGREEN project. Her methodologies and findings have been documented in her Cambridge University Press publication "Redefining Development: Resolving Complex Challenges in Developing Countries" (2020), and her work has influenced the development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) on urban health in sub-Saharan Africa