Dawit Wondimagegn MD

Chair, Department of Psychiatry
Faculty of Medicine
Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia

Dr. Dawit Wondimagegn is Chief Executive Director of the College of Health Sciences and Vice President of Addis Ababa University and was chair of the Addis Ababa University, Department of Psychiatry and the former Director of Graduate Programs for the Addis Ababa University (AAU) College of Health Sciences in Ethiopia.

Through his numerous activities as a clinical and health systems leader, global mental health expert, IPT expert, and researcher, he is helping to decrease stigma and improve access to mental healthcare. An Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at AAU, he co-leads with Clare Pain and Brian Hodges, the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration to develop post-graduate subspecialty training programs in numerous areas of medicine, primary care and nursing in Ethiopia.

He has published in the areas of global mental health, family medicine, medical ethics, psychotherapy knowledge translation, and post-partum depression. He was a primary investigator of two Grand Challenges Canada funded projects – one with co-PI Clare Pain, The Biaber Project, to scale up screening and mental health care in Ethiopian primary care settings; and to engage with Ethiopian traditional healers, using a collaborative care model to increase the identification and treatment of psychiatric disorders. He has culturally adapted IPT for Ethiopia (IPT-E) and led IPT workshops for psychiatry residents at AAU and University of Toronto. The Biaber Project enabled the training of >500 Ethiopian primary care nurses in IPT-E.