New PopFam Chair Believes Demographic Resilience Is the Future
After college, Thoai D. Ngo, the incoming chair of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health, got his start in public health with a job at the National Institutes of Health as its first intramural research fellow in the International HIV/STD Section. He was quickly immersed in the high-stakes work of preventing HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, working in China, Uganda, and Vietnam. Through these experiences, he gained a first-hand look at the key role structural factors like inequality play in spreading disease. “Ultimately, disease is an indicator of larger social and societal forces such as power and gender dynamics,” Ngo says.
Ngo, who starts as “PopFam” chair on October 8, brings a global perspective, in every sense of the word. A leader and innovator in global public health and development, he has worked in dozens of countries where he has shaped research and policy on major public health issues from child marriage to maternal mortality to sustainable development. His approach is interdisciplinary and collaborative. He builds and leads large teams and works closely with community members, implementers, funders, and policymakers. Despite mounting challenges like climate change and economic inequality, he says public health can and should engage in meaningful ways to build resilience among vulnerable communities.
“Public health is good at identifying problems. But what are the solutions?” Ngo says. “I’m always thinking about the intervention research and how to evaluate programs and policies to make sure they are effective for communities we wish to serve.”
Global Impact
Ngo was born in Vietnam after the war—an experience he says shaped his trajectory. “I’ve always been interested in improving health and social outcomes for marginalized communities. Growing up in post-war poverty, I saw the devastating impact it has on, not just my immediate family and people around me, but on the whole population.” He arrived in the U.S. at the age of 12 as a refugee. A biology major at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, he got the chance to run a research laboratory but his interest was always on a larger scale.
After graduating, he reached out to Thomas Quinn, a leader in HIV research at the National Institutes of Health, who gave him his first public health job and the formative experience of working on the front lines of the HIV epidemic in several countries. At the same time, he was working to earn his Master in Health Science in global epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. After his fellowship at NIH and receiving his MHS, he left for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where he completed his PhD in the Faculty of Population Health and Epidemiology with a dissertation on medication abortion, setting the stage for the next phase of his career.
In 2008, the global nonprofit MSI Reproductive Choices recruited Ngo to build its research department; he eventually led a global team of 80 researchers and monitoring and evaluation specialists working in 37 countries. Initiatives he championed included collecting data and building evidence that showed that abortions provided by mid-level providers, such as midwives and nurses, as well as self-administration and home-use of medication abortion are a safe alternative in low- and middle-income countries facing a shortage of health workers with high rates of unsafe abortion and can be a powerful tool to lower rates of maternal mortality. These research initiatives were led by researchers based in those countries working in tandem with local leaders.
“I invested in identifying and developing talent in those countries and I worked with them to understand the needs of the communities they were serving. We worked together to identify the barriers, then we developed, tested, and evaluated solutions,” he says. “It’s a model I’ve continued to use.” The approach works. This body of research together with other efforts across the field led the WHO to change their guidelines on abortion, and several countries followed suit. More broadly, Ngo’s research on expanding abortion access has shaped policy discussions in the U.S. and UK, where he has been cited in amicus briefs and parliamentary hearings.
Forging Bonds Across Disciplines and Sectors
In 2014, he joined Innovation for Poverty Action, where he led a staff of 500 working with academics on the design and implementation of over 250 randomized impact evaluations on poverty alleviation interventions and programs across agriculture, education, health, microfinance, and governance in 18 countries. Two years later, the Population Council tapped him to serve as the Global Program Director for Poverty, Gender, and Youth; in 2021, he was named Vice President of Social and Behavioral Science Research, where he oversaw a global team of interdisciplinary scientists in 30 countries working on a range of issues covering sexual and reproductive health, gender equity, education, population dynamics, and climate change.
“I don't believe there’s one discipline that can solve the world problems we’re facing at the moment so we must work across disciplines and sectors,” he says. Notably, he and his team produced evidence to mobilize investment to end child marriage, identifying varied structural drivers of child marriage by region and developing frameworks and programs to eliminate child marriage. Again, the strategy paid dividends with the research cited in UN policy documents and used by advocacy groups, governments, and funders to guide investments.
Naturally, Ngo was familiar with Columbia Mailman and the Department of Population and Family Health and knew its reputation for top-flight education and research programs. For several years, he was a guest lecturer in a class taught by former PopFam chair John Santelli. He also hosted Columbia Mailman students as academic interns and recruited Columbia Mailman graduates to the Population Council. “PopFam is one of the few public health departments around the world that blends social justice, practice-based science, and rigorous research and teaching into one,” he says, adding that the department is the ideal place to take on the complex public health challenges of the coming decades.
A More Resilient Future
Over the last 30 years, Ngo says, the field of population health and development has transformed key public health priorities, including HIV, reproductive health and rights, child immunization, and maternal health, among others. While still incomplete, these efforts have achieved substantial gains, lowering child mortality, unintended pregnancy, and maternal mortality while empowering women and girls. Now, emerging global challenges threaten to reverse this progress and put the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals out of reach. “The 21st century is defined by a climate crisis and entrenched, growing economic inequality,” he says. In response, he speaks about demographic resilience, an approach that combines policy-ready research on environmental, economic, health, and social factors.
“The fields of population studies and public health need to be bolder, more inclusive, and more innovative,” Ngo says. “We can promote health, social and economic development together with equity and justice,” he says. “There is a pressing need for this in the world today, and I am optimistic that PopFam and Mailman can rise to the challenge.”