Flavours of Family Planning, Founder

Berchmans is a Rwandan physician with five years of experience promoting grassroots public health organizations in Africa. During his first year at Johns Hopkins University, he served as the student director of strategic partnerships for the Africa Business Club and as a guest teaching assistant speaker at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the University of Connecticut’s Department of Applied Science. As a Research Assistant for World Vision, he assessed the cost and vaccine uptake impact of integrating COVID-19 vaccination into South Sudan’s existing routine immunization infrastructure. In addition, he worked with the Johns Hopkins Innovation Fund to promote eleven community-based anti-violence organizations in Baltimore. His internship is at the Africa Union, CDC Africa, Department of Health Economics. Before enrolling at Johns Hopkins, he founded Rwanda’s Medical Doctors for Choice network to expand access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health rights and Justice Services. He co-founded Healthy People Rwanda (HPR) and helped develop robust road safety and first aid programs in Rwanda, bringing World Bank and European Commission partnerships to HPR. He initiated the successful LUBRICATE project, transforming sexual health counseling and therapy for women cancer patients and survivors in Rwanda. As a result, he was awarded one hundred thousand Canadian dollars by Grand Challenges Canada to support this work in Rwanda. During his undergraduate education, he started the first non-U.S.A chapter of Globemed at the University of Rwanda to foster health equity and social justice by connecting students with grassroots organizations. Berchmans intends to contribute to African public health research divisions and promote access to essential prescription drugs, health tech services, medical device manufacturing, and supply chains from high-income to low-resource communities. Berchmans enjoys cooking and hosts an edutainment program, “Flavours of Family Planning,” promoting male engagement in family planning.