Penn Nursing awards $100,000 to nonprofit work improving women’s health care

The School of Nursing announced Diane Dodge, the executive director of the Tiba Foundation, as the recipient of the 2026 Penn Nursing Renfield Foundation Award for Global Women’s Health.

Dodge will be recognized at Perry World House in April, where she will receive an unrestricted $100,000 grant to further her nonprofit program Boda Girls. Her work addresses the lack of safe, affordable transportation options for women in rural Kenyan communities.

In a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Nursing School Dean Antonia Villarruel wrote that the school is proud to honor Dodge for “redefining what is possible for women and girls in rural Kenya and beyond.”

“Diane recognizes what we as nurses know to be true: health does not exist in a vacuum,” Villarruel wrote. “By turning transportation into a driver for maternal health and economic agency, she addresses the critical ‘context’ of women’s lives that is so often overlooked.”

The Renfield Foundation Award, established in 2012, is presented biennially to leaders around the world who have worked to make a “significant and measurable impact on the health of women and girls,” according to the School of Nursing’s Center for Global Women’s Health website. 

Dodge told the DP that the Boda Girls program first took root after she and Tiba Foundation Vice President Rhiana Menen visited a local girls’ high school in rural Kenya, where they learned of the common, yet dangerous practice of girls being transported in motorcycle taxis by men.

“In most rural areas — and most of Kenya is rural — women don’t drive,” Dodge explained.

She added that “there’s been so much sexual harassment from the male drivers, and nothing can be done about it, or nothing has been done about it.”

Working with Dan Ogola, the founder and CEO of the Matibabu Foundation, the team sought to address this lack of safe, affordable transportation in rural communities, which also created significant barriers for women to access healthcare. They launched the first cohort of the Boda Girls program in 2022, offering training for women to become professional motorcycle taxi drivers and health advocates.

Through the program, women can buy motorcycle taxis — or “bodas” as they are called in Kenya — with zero-interest loans, which can be paid off with a combination of regular community rides and “free rides” for women seeking transportation to health clinics for non-acute medical check-ups. For each “free ride,” Boda Girls pays the drivers $1, allowing them to pay off the motorcycle cost within 18 months. After this, according to Dodge, the funds can help them pay for things like school fees, sending children to college, or buying farmland.

“The concept came from the need to provide an option for women for safe transportation,” Dodge said. “But what it really provides is a way that women can improve their livelihood.”

Dodge also described the team’s current efforts to help increase early detections of cervical and breast cancer by providing free rides for cancer screenings and follow-up care.

The award will help support the expansion of this initiative to 10 counties and 40 hospitals over the next five years, with the goal of providing a total of 1 million health services.

Dodge credits the success of Boda Girls to the initial cohort of 10 girls at the Matibabu Hospital. In the two-year pilot period, the group’s work spurred a 67% jump in the number of hospital births and doubled the number of ultrasounds and cancer screenings in the community.

“It happened because those first 10 girls,” Dodge said. “So I always call them the founders, because if it failed, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

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