Dr. Schola Matovu

<p>Dr. Schola Matovu’s journey from a girl in Uganda to completing her PhD at the University of California, San Francisco, one of the leading nursing schools, is an inspiring story of achievement against great odds. Dr. Matovu was raised by her grandmother in a village in Uganda in East Africa. Her childhood memories are filled with marvel for her Jaja, as she affectionately calls her grandmother, and her Jaja’s healing and midwifery skills, which were highly sought after in their village. Dr. Matovu’s own path to a career in healthcare began in those formative years where she would often accompany her grandmother gathering healing herbs and observing Jaja attend to the myriad ailments brought to her by their fellow villagers. These experiences growing up in a country that had been ravaged by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, observing first-hand the challenges faced by grandparents taking on the role of primary caregivers for orphaned children, influenced Dr. Matovu’s research interests as she pursued her education in psychiatric mental health nursing. “I wanted to find a way of contributing to the health and wellbeing of grandmothers, just like my Jjaja,” Dr. Matovu explains.</p><p>Today, Dr. Matovu is an assistant professor at the University of Utah College of Nursing. Currently she is on a 12-month GloCal Health Fellowship that is supported by the University of California Global Health Institute and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and Fogarty International Center. She is conducting a pilot study utilizing qualitative research and a community engaged approach towards the development of an intervention that supports grandmother caregivers.</p><p>Dr. Matovu is also the co-founder and co-director of Nurse-to-Nurse Global Initiative, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower nurses in the global community, in seeking professional development that enhances their growth and promotes the health and dignity of the patient populations that they serve. The Initiative links nursing institutions in the U