Catherine Machalaba
Planetary Health Scientist
Vermont, USA
Catherine Machalaba Catherine is the inaugural Planetary Health Scientist under The Nature Conservancy’s Human Dimensions Science Team. © L. Machalaba
Areas of Expertise
Health, biodiversity, climate change
Biography
Catherine Machalaba is the inaugural Planetary Health Scientist under The Nature Conservancy’s Human Dimensions Science Team. In this role, she is excited to make health-positive conservation interventions more visible to accelerate progress toward TNC’s conservation, climate and people goals.
Catherine serves on the One Health High-Level Expert Panel advising the Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations Environment Programme, World Health Organization and World Organisation for Animal Health in their collaborative work. She is also active in the American Public Health Association and the IUCN’s expert Commissions. She holds a master's in public health from Dartmouth Medical School and a PhD in environmental and planetary health sciences from the City University of New York School of Public Health.
Before joining TNC, Catherine served as a consultant to the World Bank’s Agriculture, Health, and Environment global practices and was a principal scientist at a One Health-focused organization, working closely with partners in Ghana and Liberia. She began her career in 2004 as a field agent in the Vermont department of health, interned with the Vermont Attorney General’s office on tobacco control policy and completed a health systems engineering fellowship with the VA Boston Healthcare System.