Julia Hill is the Access Advocacy Officer for Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign in South Africa. She advocates for access to affordable, adapted, and effective medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for MSF projects, specifically those in Southern Africa. In her current role, Ms. Hill is collaborating with the Treatment Action Campaign to “Fix the Patent Laws” in South Africa, calling on the Department of Trade and Industry to incorporate TRIPS flexibilities and implement a patent examination system into South African intellectual property policies. She is also assisting the MSF project in Khayelitsha to find more affordable access to the re-purposed DR-TB drug, linezolid. In Geneva, Ms. Hill also worked for the MSF Access Campaign, where she focused on issues of vaccine pricing and adaptation, and was the principal drafter of the MSF report, “The Right Shot”.
Ms. Hill worked in South Sudan with The Carter Center in 2012, managing Guinea worm eradication efforts in Kapoeta South County. She has also organized HIV/AIDS education programs while at the United Nations Development Programme in Botswana, and conducted political analysis for the U.S. State Department in Greece. She has provided consulting services for a Vietnamese municipality regarding an improved design for the town’s waste management system. Ms. Hill also served for two years as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, working together with her community to develop rural hygiene and sanitation initiatives, train midwives, and improve a school library. Ms. Hill has studied in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Ankara, Turkey, as well as in her home country of the U.S.—she holds a Bachelor’s in International Studies from the University of Oregon, and a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University.