Alumna Precious Mutoru forges strategic partnerships across Uganda’s public and private sectors to create sustainable sexual and reproductive health systems
Strengthening sexual and reproductive health in Uganda means bringing everyone to the table: government ministries, private sector innovators, development partners, and the communities themselves. Precious Mutoru has made this collaborative vision her mandate.
As Senior Manager of Advocacy and Partnerships at Population Services International Uganda (PSIU), Precious leads the organization’s program and policy influence efforts. Her work centers on a critical insight: sustainable progress in sexual and reproductive health requires more than good programs. It demands strategic alignment across sectors and deep collaboration between public and private stakeholders.
This spring, Precious convened Uganda’s first Private Sector Engagement Summit on reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and family planning. With over 50% of Ugandans accessing healthcare through private channels, the summit united stakeholders around a shared vision of public and private sectors working in concert to achieve universal access to quality services.
“The private sector is not just a service provider,” Precious reflects. “It is a formidable partner, an innovator, and a key driver of sustainable, equitable health systems.”
Her partnership-building extends beyond traditional health actors. Working under the Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development, Precious has helped embed Gender Transformative Approaches into health policies and community action. Through collaborative analysis and stakeholder convenings, she’s creating space to challenge harmful norms around reproductive decision-making and elevate positive masculinities. Safe motherhood, she recognizes, “goes beyond women’s issues.” Precious has been instrumental in the rollout of injectable contraceptives in pharmacies, aligned ministerial priorities around self-care innovations, formalized strategic partnerships, and mobilized funding amid shifting global health landscapes.
Her approach reflects the distributed leadership model that GHC cultivates in its fellows: transforming health systems requires building bridges across sectors, centering the voices of those most affected, and creating partnerships designed for sustainability from the start.
As Uganda works toward its Vision 2040 health goals, Precious continues to champion what she calls “shared stewardship,” where government leadership, private innovation, domestic resource mobilization, and community voice converge to build resilient health systems that serve everyone, especially those in the “missing middle” who fall through the gaps of existing care models.