Jose “Oying” Rimon II

Former Institute Director | Senior Scientist Emeritus

Jose “Oying” G. Rimon II is the former Director of the William H. Gates Sr. Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and former Principal Investigator of the Challenge Initiative (TCI). Oying is a Senior Scientist Emeritus in the Department of Population and Family Health faculty. He was also the Founding Director of the School’s Center for Public Health Advocacy. Oying chairs the International Steering Committee and the Core Organizing Group of the biennial International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP).

An internationally recognized leader in population, reproductive health, and family planning, Oying brings more than 30 years of leadership experience in public health to this role. He has designed, managed, and evaluated over 300 advocacy, behavior change, and knowledge management projects across multiple public health issues in Asia, Africa, and the Near East. From 2008 to 2012, he led the policy and advocacy portfolio at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, covering family planning, maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH), and nutrition. He was one of the key planners of the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning.

Before joining the Gates Foundation in 2008, he was a founding member and the Senior Deputy Director of the Bloomberg School’s Center for Communication Programs (CCP), where he led health behavior and knowledge management programs in at least 50 countries worldwide. He was also Director of the Health Communication Partnership (HCP), USAID’s flagship health and behavior global program from 2000-2007. He is co-author of the book​, Health Communication: Lessons from Reproductive Health; the Social Marketing chapter of the textbook, Health Behavior and Health Education and Institutionalizing Communication in International Health, a chapter in The Handbook of Global Health Communication.​