Takhona Hlatshwako’s passion for public health led her from her native Eswatini to Carolina then Oxford and back again.
By Susan Hudson, University Communications
Takhona Hlatshwako ’22 has never wavered in her intent to use her public health knowledge to help her home of Eswatini, a southern African country devastated by HIV. But as the health conditions changed in her homeland (formerly known as Swaziland), so did her focus.
“I ended up not doing any of the courses I said I was going to do once I got the Rhodes,” said Hlatshwako, who earned a bachelor’s degree in health policy and management from the Gillings School of Global Health. She wound up using her prestigious Rhodes scholarship to earn two advanced degrees from Oxford University in England, one focused on global epidemiology research and the other on social and health policy.
“The reason I went into public health was seeing an epidemic ravage my community. But what we’re seeing now is a rise in noncommunicable diseases,” she said. To handle these illnesses — cancer, heart disease, diabetes —a country needs a strong health system and other resources. Low-wealth countries dealing with infectious diseases like HIV or COVID-19 at the same time face the hardest challenges.
“How do we tackle the double burden of communicable diseases and noncommunicable diseases? That’s really where my mind’s at right now,” Hlatshwako said. “I hope to have opportunities to explore that further through the doctoral program.”
For that, Hlatshwako is returning to Gillings, where she studied public health as an undergraduate.