Bethany Young Holt, PhD, MPH

Dr. Bethany Young Holt is Executive Director of CAMI Health, a program of the Public Health Institute (PHI). She has over 25 year’s experience working in women’s reproductive health with a focus on family planning, prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and social determinants of health. As a researcher, NGO director, social entrepreneur, and educator her experience includes work in the United States, Africa, and South Pacific.

In the early 2000’s, Bethany founded CAMI Health, an organization dedicated to advancing the health of women and girls worldwide. In 2009, she co-founded the Initiative for MPTs (IMPT), a product-neutral global network aimed to advance the field of multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs)—innovative products that deliver multifaceted reproductive health prevention, largely focused on contraception and prevention of and HIV and other STIs. Over the past decade she has secured more than $12 million in funding, including from USAID, BMGF and NIH, and has managed a small staff along with a broad cadre of technical consultants to build and advance the field of MPTs. She has extensive experience collaborating with US and international donors, private foundations, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other UN agencies, private companies, and leading NGOs.

With a wide-range of public speaking experience, Bethany has been an academic lecturer and given dozens of presentations at scientific and public health conferences and other convenings around the world. She has also been Principal Investigator and/or contributed to an array of qualitative and quantitative research studies; facilitated and implemented data-driven gap analyses and strategic action frameworks; chaired or co-chaired international convenings; evaluated family planning programs; published in peer review publications and mainstream media; and served as a guest editor with the World Health Organization for the BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She has a PhD and MPH from the University of California, Berkeley. Her first professional experience in public health was as a rural health volunteer with the Peace Corps in Mauritania, West Africa.