Dr. Drissa Toure has dedicated his research career to building community-based participatory programs to improve healthcare access for maternal and child populations. He is an innovative leader with proven successful work in private and public universities. He is a trained physician and public health expert and an established researcher in child and maternal health in minority populations. Dr. Toure has demonstrated experience leading research to understand the social, epigenetic, and biological factors associated with environmental and child health. With degrees in Medicine (M.D.) and Public Health (Ph.D., M.P.H), he has gained more than 20 years of experience working with diverse populations. He has expertise in designing research and evaluation projects using robust mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) for each situation and writes proposals, reports, and manuscripts accordingly. Dr. Toure has hands-on experience developing programs and conducting evaluation and research in hard-to-reach settings and the ability to build interdisciplinary local, national, and international collaboration to improve equity and reduce disparities for women, newborns, and children. He also has substantial applied program planning, implementation and management experience, diplomacy, and tact in local, national, and international team settings.