David Malcolm Potts, MB, BChir, Ph.D., FRCOG

David Malcolm Potts MB, BChir, Ph.D., FRCOG, is being recognized by Continental Who’s Who as a Top Human Reproductive Scientist & Professor in the field of Global Health in acknowledgment for his devotion to Family Planning Education and Reproductive Healthcare Outreach with the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Potts began his career as the medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation in London from 1969 to 1978. He further flourished as the president and the chief executive officer of Family Health International in Research Triangle Park, NC, in 1978, where he would remain in practice until 1990. Shortly after, he was the first holder of the Fred H. Bixby endowed chair in Population and Family Planning and founded the Bixby Center for Population, Health & Sustainability with a team of young experts.

In these current appointments, Dr. Potts focuses on providing women comprehensive family planning choices. He often treated patients recovering from poorly-performed extra medical abortions, and developed a passion for providing accurate and accessible family planning resources to his patients regardless of their marital status. He has been a leader in safe motherhood, introducing misoprostol to control post-partum hemorrhage in low resource settings. Dr. Potts has a 50 commitment to reducing the risks, exploitation all too often associated with unsafe abortion. In the 1970s he helped introduce manual vacuum aspiration abortion MVA) which continues to be used more than a million times each year.

A renowned physician and educator, Dr. Potts has garnered over six decades of vast knowledge and professional experience in family planning, girl’s education, women’s autonomy, and reproductive healthcare outreach. He currently is an emeritus professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the first holder of the Bixby Endowed chair in Population and Family Planning in the School of Public Health, UC Berkeley. , -Director of the Berkeley International Group (BIG) with Dr. Julia Walsh and CEO of Family Health International (FHI). As CEO, he launched the first large scale studies of maternal mortality, which helped start the worldwide Safe Motherhood Initiative. He is the Co-Founder of Cadence Health, a pharmaceutical company that is switching oral contraceptives from prescription to over-the-counter sale. Dr. Potts is proud of his extensive research in the misoprostol drug, in which he discovered prevent women from dying from postpartum hemorrhage. His passionate pursuits led him to receive a grant from the Susan Butter Foundation for $10 million.

Dr. Potts won a scholarship in History to Cambridge University but switched to Natural Sciences. Continuing his post-education training, he went on to receive his medical degree at University College Hospital Medical School and his Ph.D. in Anatomy at Cambridge University. In light of his achievements, Dr. Potts is the founder and front runner of the Oasis Initiative — Organizing to Advance Solutions in the Sahel, a project of the University of California, Berkeley & Venture Strategies for Health and Development. Dr. Potts and the dedicated team of experts are collectively committed to three critical pillars: educating and empowering adolescent girls and women, expanding access to voluntary family planning, and adapting agriculture to climate change. With these in mind, various programs include the “Hilling Mu” Program, that provides safe spaces and mentored groups proven to delay marriage by keeping

girls in school; the Center of Excellence In Women’s Health & Empowerment, based in Niamey, Niger, for research and collaboration on population and family planning in the Sahel region; the Sahel Leadership Program, that aims to build a critical mass of emerging leaders who work in sexual and reproductive rights and girls’ education and empowerment; and the Women in Development Research

Internship, that provides scholarships to Masters 2 students at University Abdou Moumouni (UAM) in Niger and assists them in securing a 3-month placement at local, national and international institutions. Throughout the years, their approach has garnered successful results. Dr. Potts is particularly proud of raising the mean marriage percentage from 14.9% to 17.7%, and now 70%-80% graduation rates from 4%.

Revered as an expert in his field, Dr. Potts has published ten books and over 350 scientific papers and articles. His books include Abortion (co-written with Peter Diggory and John Peel, 1977), Textbook of Contraceptive Practice (1st edition co-written with John Peel, 1969; 2nd edition co-written with Peter Diggory, 1983; long the key textbook in the field), Queen Victoria’s Gene (written with his brother Prof. William Potts), Ever since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality (written with Dr. Roger Short, 1999) and Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World (co-written with Thomas Hayden, 2008).

Remaining abreast of the latest developments in his specialty, Dr. Potts has maintained active memberships and affiliations with professional organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the Association for the Advancement of Science. In his spare time, Dr. Potts enjoys reading Romanesque Architecture, biographies, and conflicts, and wars.

Dr. Potts dedicates this recognition to Dr. Peter Diggary, his brother, Bill Potts, and Mechai Virarvaylia in Thailand. For more information, please visit https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/ and http://oasisinitiative.be