On April 23, 2023, Brown School MSW alum, Alice Emasu, spoke to Brown School students about her mission to provide holistic maternal health care and obstetric fistula treatment to women in rural Uganda.
Alice Emasu grew up in eastern Uganda and felt compelled at an early age to address the injustices she witnessed against women. After an early career in journalism, Alice co-founded TERREWODE, a Ugandan NGO dedicated to empowering girls and women and improving their health and livelihood, with a focus on maternal health and obstetric fistula. Since its inception in 1999, TERREWODE has provided holistic fistula care to thousands of women in rural Uganda. In 2019, Alice and her team opened Terrewode Women’s Community Hospital in eastern Uganda, the only dedicated fistula hospital in the country. A 2012 Ashoka fellow, Alice holds an MSW from Washington University St. Louis and an MBA from University of Cattolica, Italy. Alice is a champion of women’s rights and a national advocate for reproductive health care delivery improvement in Uganda. Her passion for gender equality and social justice is a driving force for improving health care and economic systems that disempower women and girls. In 2019, Washington University featured Alice in The Source.