Renée A. Botta, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Global Health & Development Communication, and the director of the master’s program in International and Intercultural Communication at the University of Denver in Denver Colorado.
Renee has spent 18 years working in southern and eastern Africa and Haiti to improve health outcomes through community-centered, participatory communication and health promotion. Her research focuses on communication in WASH projects and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and includes health behavior change, international and intercultural health communication, family and peer communication about health and about health messages, and the role of nurses and CHWs in health education and outcomes. She is particularly interested in developing participatory communication models tailored to the local socio-cultural context and the motivational role income generating activities and community driven social innovation play in sustaining behavior change and in sustaining health outcomes. Her work with NECH-CIEH began when she was approached to collaborate with NECH-CIEH’s network of nurses in Haiti on a project using soap selling as a platform for hygiene education. Since then, Renee’s commitment to NECH-CIEH has grown to empowering and serving all that NECH-CIEH does across its mission, vision and goals as a board member and collaborator on multiple projects.