In a groundbreaking recognition of innovative leadership in global women’s health, Diane Dodge, Executive Director of the Tiba Foundation, has been awarded the 2026 Penn Nursing Renfield Foundation Award for Global Women’s Health. This prestigious accolade comes with a $100,000 unrestricted grant, which will propel forward her transformative initiatives to enhance healthcare access for women in underserved regions. Her recognition underscores not only her visionary approach but also the growing importance of addressing the social determinants of health—particularly in rural communities where structural challenges severely impede maternal and women’s health outcomes.
The award ceremony, scheduled for April 13, 2026, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, celebrates Dodge’s efforts to dismantle systemic barriers through culturally tailored and sustainable solutions. Her work ingeniously targets one of the often-overlooked impediments to health care access: transportation. In several rural areas of Kenya, prolonged delays or inability to reach healthcare facilities exacerbate maternal morbidity and mortality—a reality that her initiatives aim to transform fundamentally.
Dodge’s pioneering project, the Boda Girls program, disrupts conventional norms by training women as professional motorcycle taxi operators to provide vital transport services alongside health advocacy. This dual role empowers the drivers not only economically but also socially, creating an intricate network where transportation becomes a direct conduit to improved maternal health, antenatal clinic attendance, and cancer care access. The program’s impact during its pilot phase is especially noteworthy, showing a remarkable 67% elevation in hospital births and a 110% increase in maternal clinic visits—outcomes that vividly illustrate the nexus between transportation infrastructure and healthcare delivery.
By integrating women into a traditionally male-dominated transport sector, the Boda Girls initiative challenges entrenched gender roles, facilitating not only improved health outcomes but also the economic emancipation of the participants. Women engaged in the program reportedly earn up to eight times their previous daily income, highlighting the potential of such initiatives to catalyze broader social transformations beyond the health sphere. This confluence of gender empowerment and public health underscores a multi-dimensional approach that can serve as a scalable model globally.
Beyond its immediate operational success, the Boda Girls program has gained international recognition, being featured in major media outlets such as DW News, Africa News, and The New York Times. These features amplify the conversation around transportation as a critical determinant of health, a factor frequently marginalized in global health discourses. By highlighting this dimension, Dodge’s work reorients the focus toward integrative solutions that bind transportation, gender equity, and health interventions in a cohesive framework.
Diane Dodge’s career, spanning over 25 years, epitomizes sustained commitment to community-driven solutions that are both impactful and enduring. Her role transcends the Boda Girls initiative; she also spearheaded the Nursing Promise Pathway, a strategic program designed to create pipelines for rural girls into the nursing profession, thereby fostering local health workforce development. Additionally, her co-founding of the LREB Cervical & Breast Cancer Collaborative has mobilized concerted efforts across 14 Kenyan counties to amplify screening and HPV vaccination, addressing critical cancer care gaps.
Preceding her work in Kenya, Dodge contributed to the Oakland Promise initiative, broadening educational access and career support for students, an experience that undoubtedly informs her holistic approach to community empowerment and public health. Her multifaceted expertise bridges health care, education, and social systems, demonstrating how integrated strategies can unlock transformative outcomes in resource-limited settings.
The forthcoming phase of the Tiba Foundation’s work, bolstered by the Renfield Award’s funding, aims to scale the Boda Girls model across ten Kenyan counties and forty hospitals within five years. A particularly innovative facet of this expansion includes piloting electric motorcycles, an initiative that provides a confluence point between women’s health advocacy and environmental sustainability. This forward-thinking integration embodies how public health initiatives can concurrently address climate change challenges.
The envisaged scale and scope of this project—targeting the delivery of one million health services—reflects a bold ambition to embed transportation-based solutions deeply within health system strengthening efforts. This approach is poised to generate data-driven evidence on how improved mobility affects maternal and women’s health outcomes, offering potentially replicable models for other rural contexts facing similar barriers.
Experts in global health applaud Dodge’s leadership for demonstrating how community innovation can bridge persistent gaps between health care delivery and economic opportunity. Such models, which prioritize local agency and cultural grounding, contrast with traditional top-down interventions and offer valuable lessons in sustainability. The Renfield Foundation Award thus recognizes not only the tangible health service enhancements but also the paradigm shift towards inclusive, gender-sensitive, and environmentally conscious solutions.
As the field of global women’s health grapples with the multifactorial nature of health inequities, the intersectional strategy championed by Diane Dodge and the Tiba Foundation provides a powerful blueprint. By linking transportation infrastructure directly to clinical outcomes and social empowerment, this approach advances a new frontier in the conceptualization and practice of health equity.
The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, which hosts this esteemed award, continues to play a pivotal role in spotlighting and catalyzing transformative initiatives globally. Through its commitment to innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and evidence-based practice, Penn Nursing exemplifies leadership in nurturing future health leaders grounded in community impact.
Diane Dodge’s recognition is not merely a personal achievement but a clarion call for global health stakeholders to reexamine and expand the frameworks within which women’s health challenges are understood and addressed. Her work vividly illustrates that tackling seemingly peripheral but critical social determinants can yield profound improvements in health outcomes and socio-economic empowerment.
Subject of Research: Not specified beyond women’s health and transportation as a social determinant in rural communities in Kenya.
Article Title: Not provided.
News Publication Date: February 17, 2026.
Web References:
– https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/
– https://tibafoundation.org/dipl-team-member/diane-dodge/
– https://tibafoundation.org/
– https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/cgwh/our-work/renfield-award/
– https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/calendar/event/6079-the-penn-nursing-renfield-foundation-award-for
– https://perryworldhouse.upenn.edu/
– https://www.africanews.com/2026/01/19/kenyas-boda-girls-ride-to-save-lives-in-remote-communities/
– https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/about/our-leadership/dean/
– https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/cgwh/
References: None specified beyond web sources.
Image Credits: Valentina Sadiul.
Keywords: Nursing, Women’s Health, Global Health, Maternal Health, Transportation, Economic Empowerment, Gender Equity, Rural Health, Kenya, Public Health Innovation, Electric Motorcycles, Health Access.
Tags: advancing healthcare access for rural womenBoda Girls motorcycle taxi programculturally tailored healthcare initiativesDiane Dodge Tiba Foundationinnovative global health advocacy programsmaternal health in underserved regionsnonprofit leadership in global women’s healthPenn Nursing Renfield Foundation Award 2026reducing maternal mortality in rural Africasocial determinants of women’s healthsustainable health solutions in Kenyawomen empowerment through transportation
