Prof Laetitia Rispel

Laetitia Rispel is a South African public health scholar based at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she is affiliated with the School of Public Health. Her work centres on health systems, governance, and the health workforce, with a strong commitment to equity, social justice, and universal health coverage. She is widely recognised for shaping national debates on health policy and strengthening district and primary health care systems.

Her publications highlight sustained leadership in health workforce research, including multiple job holding, nurse practice environments, professional support, and early career trajectories through the WiSDOM cohort. Using mixed methods, structural modelling, discrete choice experiments, and qualitative case studies, she examines how workplace conditions, governance, and policy design influence retention, performance, and standards of care.

Rispel’s scholarship also addresses migrant health, district health governance, COVID-19 system responses, and transformative health professions education. Across these themes, her work interrogates power, accountability, and inclusion within health systems, offering policy-relevant insights for advancing universal health coverage in South Africa and comparable settings.