Congratulations to MPH Graduate, Ms. Rose Cardelle Riche, RN, Midwife

We are proud to celebrate Ms. Rose Cardelle Riche, RN, Midwife, a Fogarty Research Fellow at GHESKIO, who successfully defended her Master of Public Health (MPH) thesis last week. Ms. Riche will receive her MPH degree from Quisqueya University in Haiti.

Ms. Riche has worked at GHESKIO since 2017, where she provides compassionate, high-quality care to adolescents living with HIV in GHESKIO’s Adolescent HIV Clinic. For her MPH thesis, Ms. Riche evaluated an innovative model of HIV care - Young Mothers Clubs - a cohort-based intervention designed to improve retention in care and viral suppression among pregnant adolescent girls and young women.

As part of this work, Ms. Riche led monthly cohort meetings with pregnant adolescents, during which participants received integrated prenatal care, peer counseling, parenting and HIV education, and infant nutrition guidance. The Young Mothers Clubs model achieved excellent maternal retention and very low rates of HIV transmission among infants born to adolescent girls and young women, outperforming historical PMTCT outcomes in Haiti.

Ms. Riche will present the results of her MPH thesis at the upcoming International Confederation of Midwives Triennial Conference, sharing lessons from this impactful work with a global audience. Congratulations to Ms. Riche on this outstanding achievement! We look forward to her continued contributions to adolescent and maternal HIV care in Haiti.

Ms. Rose Cardelle Riche, RN, Midwife