Takhona Hlatshwako

Biography

Takhona Grace Hlatshwako attained a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. At her university, she served as the co-chair of the Minority Health Conference, the longest-running student-led health conference in the United States. She is passionate about advancing health equity both locally and globally. In her home country, the Kingdom of Eswatini, Takhona worked on a USAID-funded project aimed at improving HIV public health messaging. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she joined a global team investigating the impact of isolation measures on access to sexual and reproductive health services. In the U.S., Takhona interned at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, where she conducted research on low-value care. Her work inspired her honors thesis on decision modeling and cost-effectiveness analysis. At Oxford, Takhona pursued an MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology and a second Master’s degree in Evidence-based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation.