About
Jonathan Akoto became Director of the AB Master of Public Health (MPH) Program in 2023, succeeding the founding director Dr. Emma Riggs upon her retirement. He had joined the AB faculty in 2021 as Associate Professor of Public Health and has rapidly built the MPH program into one of the most distinctive Appalachian-focused public-health degrees in the country.
Akoto was born in Kumasi, Ghana, and earned his M.D. from the University of Ghana Medical School before pursuing public health: an M.P.H. from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Dr.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with a concentration in health systems strengthening. He worked for twelve years as a senior World Health Organization consultant on rural health-system reform projects in Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and Rwanda.
In 2019 he was awarded a Fulbright Specialist appointment in rural Tennessee, where he first encountered the parallels between West African and Appalachian rural-health challenges. He came to AB to pursue that research full-time and to help train the next generation of public-health professionals who would actually serve in central Appalachia.
Education
- 2014Dr.P.H., Health Systems — Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dissertation: Building Primary-Care Capacity in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation.
- 2005M.P.H., Public Health in Developing Countries — London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
- 2001M.B.Ch.B. (M.D.) — University of Ghana Medical School.
Teaching
Dr. Akoto teaches three required MPH core courses and supervises the program's applied practice experience (capstone fieldwork).
- PH 510Health Systems & PolicyA core MPH course covering health-system financing, governance, workforce, and reform — with detailed case studies in rural West Virginia, rural West Africa, and rural Appalachia.
- PH 530Global Health & the Rural ContextA signature AB MPH course pairing students with rural-health field sites in both West Virginia and Ghana (through AB's partnership with the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital).
- PH 690Applied Practice Experience & CapstoneA 200-hour applied practicum with one of AB's 18 regional public-health partner organizations, paired with a written capstone integrating MPH coursework.
Research & Global Practice
Akoto's research program focuses on the structural similarities between post-conflict and post-industrial rural health systems — specifically, the comparative analysis of community health worker (CHW) programs in rural West Africa and rural Appalachia. He is the principal investigator on a $1.8M Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant supporting the AB Rural CHW Initiative, and a co-PI on two Fogarty International Center grants.
He maintains active research and clinical-policy partnerships with the Ghana Health Service and continues to serve as a senior WHO consultant on a rotating basis. He has co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed articles in major public-health journals.
Selected Publications & Presentations
- 2025Co-author, "Community Health Worker Programs: Comparative Lessons from Sierra Leone and West Virginia." BMJ Global Health.
- 2024"What Rural West Virginia Can Teach Global Health." The Lancet, March.
- 2023Lead author, Building Primary Care: A Field Manual for Rural Health Systems. WHO Press.
- 2020Co-author, Health Systems After Ebola. Oxford University Press.
- 2025Plenary, APHA Annual Meeting, "The Rural Health Imagination."
Honors & Service
- 2024Appointed Director, MPH Program.
- 2023Robert Wood Johnson Foundation $1.8M Grant Award.
- 2019Fulbright Specialist, U.S. State Department.
- 2017WHO Director-General's Award for Sierra Leone Health System Recovery.
- 2014Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Distinguished Dissertation Award.
A community health worker in rural Sierra Leone and a community health worker in rural West Virginia have more in common than either has with a tertiary-care hospital in Baltimore. That is the unspoken thesis of the AB MPH program.— Dr. Jonathan Akoto, MPH, DrPH
Beyond the Classroom
Akoto lives in Philippi with his wife Akua (a registered dietitian at Davis Memorial Hospital) and their two daughters. He is an elder at the Philippi Presbyterian Church (American Baptist, since 2024), a passionate amateur Ghanaian cuisine enthusiast (his Saturday morning kelewele is locally famous), and a coach with the Barbour County youth soccer league.
He returns to Kumasi each summer for the Ghana Health Service consultation work and brings AB MPH students with him as part of the AB Global Health Practicum.