Ida Jooste, is an award-winning journalist, media technical expert and seasoned manager with over 25 years experience. She serves as the Global Health Advisor at Internews and has played a leading role in the organisation’s COVID-19 pivot and health literacy work with media partners, helping them make meaning of fast-moving science for their audiences, to produce impactful narratives and to counter misinformation.

Ida has deep and long-standing media specialisation in HIV science, sexual and reproductive health rights and gender-related health issues, science literacy and science and crisis communication.

She has been in leadership positions of both newsrooms and media development projects since 1996. She served as Country Director at the Kenya Health Media project and also led an innovative data journalism training program and introduced media training initiatives on road safety and the extractives industry in Kenya.

Ida’s vast experience as a journalist in various parts of Africa has resulted in her to have an innate understanding of intercultural communications and journalism support appropriate to settings in the developing world. Her journalism has focused on governance issues, corruption, transparency, human rights, health/HIV and investigative and analytical storytelling aimed at better educating the public and ensuring the voices of citizens are heard.