Working to promote better health care and prevention in Africa

Lizzie Heilmann ’15

Epidemiology Fellow, Center for Disease Control Global Health Fellowship Program

Major: Biological Sciences

Taking to heart the call to serve those most in need across the world, Lizzie Heilmann ’15 has spent her early career promoting better access to public health services in African communities.

Heilmann studied drug resistance in malaria parasites as an undergraduate at Notre Dame, which inspired her to become an epidemiologist to more fully understand diseases and the communities in which they spread. While pursuing a master’s in public health at Emory University, she analyzed malaria data from a mass bed net campaign in Nigeria and tutored refugees in English. These formative experiences helped prepare Heilmann for a service stint with the Peace Corps as a health volunteer in Zambia.

Living and working in rural Zambia, Heilmann witnessed firsthand the health challenges of the community. She worked alongside neighborhood health committees and a local health center staff to design grassroots solutions to promote childhood nutrition, access to clean water, and malaria prevention. Inspired to continue serving the community, Heilmann extended her two-year Peace Corps commitment to work with the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative-funded Program for the Advancement of Malaria Outcomes (PAMO). She supported PAMO in the planning and implementation of a malaria surveillance pilot program among pregnant women attending antenatal care services.

Soon after starting that project, COVID-19 emerged. Though Heilmann became one of thousands of Peace Corps volunteers evacuated from her country of service, this didn’t stop her from staying the course with health education and service. During the evacuation and early waves of the pandemic, Heilmann shared emerging data with Zambian colleagues and fellow volunteers to dispel misinformation surrounding COVID-19. Though grateful to reconnect with family and friends during the pandemic, she was eager to return to Zambia, this time with the Public Health Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Global Health Fellowship Program.

Now based in Zambia’s capital city, Lusaka, Heilmann’s work focuses on ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia through support from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). She leads PEPFAR’s partners in scaling up comprehensive HIV prevention services for high-risk populations. Heilmann’s efforts to develop innovative tools and strategies to roll out HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to pregnant and breastfeeding women were recognized by the U.S. Embassy in Lusaka, and her collaboration with local partners led to a nearly four-fold increase in new clients initiated on PrEP in Zambia’s four CDC-supported provinces compared to the previous year.