Rachel K Jewkes

Professor Rachel Jewkes is a founder member of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative and Secretary of the SVRI from 2006-2019, before the formation of the leadership council. She is the Executive Scientist for Research Strategy and Intramural Units at the South African Medical Research Council and an honorary professor at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Public Health. Rachel is a medical doctor with public health specialist training who has led South Africa’s research on gender-based violence (GBV) for three decades. She established and led the South African Medical Research Council’s Gender and Health Research Unit, which has described the prevalence, risk factors and drivers of GBV in South Africa and developed an understanding of the socio-cultural context, particularly located in highly patriarchal gender relations. She has developed and evaluated multiple interventions to prevent GBV and assist survivors across a range of sectors from community to schools and the health sector, with a particular focus on rape, post-rape health care and the health sector response. Rachel was the lead technical advisor for the UN Multi-Country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific which conducted research in nine sites in six countries. She was the consortium director of the What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls Global Programme from 2013-2020, which led a programme of research and intervention design and delivery towards the prevention of violence against women and girls in 13 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, MENA and Central and South Asia. She is a member of the Global inter-agency Programme Advisory Committee (GPAC) for the UN Trust Fund. Rachel is an A1-rated scientist from South Africa’s National Research Foundation and is the author of nearly 400 peer-reviewed journal articles, reports, training manuals, intervention curricula and book chapters. Rachel is the Executive Scientist based in Pretoria, and a NRF A1 rated scientist and MRC gold medal winner in 2014. She is a medical doctor and Specialist in Public Health Medicine, with a Masters in Community Medicine and Doctorate of Medicine (MD) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has spent the last 30 years researching intersections of gender-based violence, gender inequity and health using methods drawn from social epidemiology, anthropology and health systems research. She has authored over four hundred publications in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and reports. She has worked closely with the South African Government over many years on sexual violence policy in the health sector. She is a founder member of the SVRI, was the Secretary for 15 years and is a member of the Leadership Council. From 2013-2020, she was the Consortium Director of the DFID-flagship What Works to Prevent Violence? Global Programme, which was conducted across 14 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East to generate knowledge on prevention of violence against women and girls. She was the lead technical advisor on the UN Multi-Country Study on Men and Violence in Asia Pacific and a member of the steering committee of the WHO multi-country study on violence against women. She is a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Injury and Violence Prevention and Control, and is a former member of the WHO's Strategic and Technical Advisory Committee for HIV-AIDS (STAC-HIV) and the STAG - WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research, and the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board. Most importantly she has been working to ensure that these research findings are translated into interventions within society to improve the lives of women. She has a very active programme of PhD supervision and is also an Honorary Professor in the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand.