BRAC University alumnus Ishrat Naher Erina, has got invitation from Bill and Melinda Gates foundation as a 2017 winner of the 120 under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders, recognizing and highlighting the achievements of the next generation of family planning leaders worldwide. The event will be hosted from September 18 - 22, 2017 in USA and organized by The Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, USA.
Ishrat is nominated for this competition because of her valuable contribution on Family planning methods, especially on infertility management and contraception method. The online voting has been done during July 1 - 15, 2017 and then she entranced into final round after securing 75% votes. Jury board has recently informed about the final result where Ishrat has become one of the 40 winners among 400 nominees across the globe and has got the invitation to join the event at Johns Hopkins campus as a representative of Bangladesh.
Being graduated from BRAC University, Department of Pharmacy, with highest distinction, she has started working with a US based research firm as a health science researcher. As a part of that, Ishrat, currently, is running a pilot project namely Prescription Bangladesh, with the aim of targeting youth minds to address Sex Education in order to deal with social taboos to make people educated, self-aware and sensible and also to ensure their good mental health condition.
She wishes to work on every aspects of Sex Education, starting from family planning to reproductive health, from puberty to sexuality education, from reproductive organs to mental health condition in order to ensure that Sex Education is an integral part of the lifelong learning process. It should be begun in early childhood and continued to adult life. The main objective of her project is to encourage personal and social development, fostering self-esteem, self-awareness, a sense of moral responsibility, and the confidence and ability to resist abuse, social taboos and unwanted experience with a view to ensuring a good and secured Mental Health Condition.