Eric Ramirez-Ferrero’s graduate studies in anthropology at Stanford and public health at Johns Hopkins led him into a career as a public health advocate, whose work has focused on family and reproductive health issues in Tanzania and Mozambique, among other places.

After being named a Population Fellow at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, he was selected by EngenderHealth-Tanzania, a nonprofit funded by USAID, to direct their new CHAMPION Project (Channeling Men’s Positive Involvement in the National HIV/AIDS Response). The five-year initiative was designed to promote gender equality and to increase men’s involvement in family health with the goal of lowering rates of HIV/AIDS, maternal mortality, gender-based violence, and unintended pregnancy. The five-year, $26 million, USAID-funded project was the largest and most comprehensive male involvement initiative in the world.

Ramirez-Ferrero is currently chief of party for a Johns Hopkins affiliated program, Jhpiego, based in Mozambique, overseeing the “Maternal and Child Survival Program,” a $44 million project funded by USAID.

In addition, Ramirez-Ferrero is the author of Troubled Fields: Men, Emotions, and the Crisis in American Farming, a work of medical ethnography that addresses the epidemic of suicides among men working in U.S. agriculture. The book has been widely and warmly reviewed since its release.