Series 4 is brought to us by the ‘Accountability and Responsiveness in Informal Settlements for Equity’ abbreviated to ARISE. The ARISE consortium is all about promoting social change for improved health and wellbeing with communities and people living and working within urban informal spaces.  Together, across 10 partners in 4 countries – Bangladesh, India, Kenya and Sierra Leone- they are co-developing solutions with communities to health and wellbeing challenges. However, co-production of knowledge for action is challenging due to the many and intersecting inequalities and power relations between researchers, development professionals, activists and communities. We will be exploring how ARISE is working to overcome these, in partnership with people in urban informal settlements or slums, to stimulate change. 

In this week’s episode we are talking to Inviolata Njoroge from LVCT Kenya and Shrutika Murthy from The George Institute for Global Health (TGI), India. They have shared their experiences of using visual methods and storytelling to bridge the power-laden distances between lived realities of waste pickers, child headed households, the elderly and people with disabilities in urban informal communities and research and policy. We hear about: 

• methods that have been used to connect with the most marginalised and often hidden people in urban informal communities 
• how different intersecting identities and inequities add new layers of vulnerability in urban informal settlements  
• the use of participant shadowing as an activity to capture experience and context of vulnerable people and what needs to be considered before using this as a method to connect with people 
• how the photovoice method has brought out silent voices and stories that are often left unheard  
• The importance of considering researcher and community mental health when using these in-depth exploratory and creative methods with vulnerable populations 

Guest presenter for this series is Robinson Karuga

Research, Evaluation and Learning Manager, LVCT Health

Robinson Karuga is a Health Systems and Policy Research specialist. His area of specialization is community health systems research, with a focus on community participation in governance and embedding of quality improvement approaches. Karuga is a co-investigator in ARISE (Accountability and Responsiveness in Informal Settlements for Equity), a multi-country research consortium that seeks to generate evidence on how to apply community-based participatory approaches to empower marginalized residents of urban informal settlements to advocate for improvements to factors that affect their health and wellbeing. Within ARISE, Robinson connects citizens with science through the implementation of community-based participatory research such as photo voice and building the capacity of co-researchers in reflexive methods. 

As the Research Capacity Strengthening lead in the ARISE Consortium, Karuga is responsible for developing and implementing the Consortium’s capacity strengthening strategy that targets 29 early and mid-career researchers, a Ph.D. cohort of 9 candidates, and community co-researchers in four countries across Africa (Kenya, Sierra Leone) and Asia (India and Bangladesh).Robinson Karuga is currently the Research Evaluations and Learning Manager at LVCT Health, a Kenyan not-for-profit organization that seeks to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable and marginalized populations through research, technical support to governments, and policy advocacy.

In this week’s episode we hear from Dr. Leonard Katalambula, the project lead of the ‘Quality Improvement for Integrated HIV, TB and Malaria Services during Antenatal and Postnatal care’ in Tanzania and

Dr Uzochukwu Egere, Senior Research Associate, Emergency Obstetric and Quality of Care Unit at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM). Together with co-host Lucy Nyaga, Country Director at LSTM Kenya, our guests discuss the scope of implementation research under the Global Fund programme, the institutional research collaborations and capacity strengthening opportunities, and the benefits of the programme to communities. 

Lucy Nyaga

Country Director, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Kenya 

My name is Lucy Nyaga. I am the Country Director, Liverpool School of Tropical medicine, in Kenya. I have a background in Medical Anthropology and Public Health with extensive experience in promoting implementation of research results into policy and practice with a special focus on MNH.  With twenty years’ experience working in health programming, my experience and expertise in MNH has involved managing and implementing programmes that incorporate implementation research to inform effective programming and policy influence. Working with a range of organizations ranging from governments, academic and research institutions, UN agencies, and national & INGO, I have led and contributed to key MNH research that has led to policy influence in Eastern Africa. 

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/lucy-nyaga 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-nkirote-2062832b/ 

HASHTAGS 

• Primary Hashtag: #KML_MNHQoC 
• Other Hashtags: #MaternalHealth #NewbornHealth #MNH #SDG3 
• #MNHCommunity #AcceleratingTogether #SavingLivesTogether #Antenatal 
• #Postnatal #MNH policy #EffectiveANC&PNC #EquityANC&PNC 

TWITTER HANDLES 

@Lucynnyaga 

@MOH_Kenya 

Dr Uzochukwu Egere

Senior Research Associate (M&E and Data management), Emergency Obstetric and Quality of Care Unit, Liverpool school of Tropical Medicine 

I am primarily a paediatrician with extensive research experience and interest in Implementation research and health systems strengthening in the areas of Maternal and Child health, Lung health and Tuberculosis. My work focusses on health and health systems challenges relevant to low-and middle-income settings and facilitates interactions between researchers and consumers of research outputs (the community) to ensure timely policy change and uptake of interventions. 

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/dr-uzochukwu-egere 

Dr. Leonard Katalambula  

Dr. Leonard Katalambula is PhD holder in public health and head of public health department at the University of Dodoma. He has over 14 years’ experience in teaching research and consultancy related to public health. He is a project lead of the Quality Improvement for Integrated HIV, TB and Malaria Services during Antenatal and Postnatal care in Tanzania, The project is funded by Global Fund and implemented by LSTM, Ministry of Health and the University of Dodoma. Dr Katalambula is also a principal investigator of the project “Meals Education and Garden for School in Adolescents. He has been engaged in several implementation research including 'Effectiveness of letter' and 'brochure' and 'brochure to a...

In this week’s episode we hear from two community health workers about the work they have been doing to improve mental health services for people affected by neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) as part of the REDRESS programme in Liberia. Satta Sonnie Kollie in Lofa County, Liberia is a community health services supervisor and peer researcher; and Harrison Wenjor in Grand Gedeh, Liberia is the focal person for TB and people affected by NTDs. They discuss the importance of using local dialect, and being a trusted member of the community, especially when talking about mental health and providing counselling to people affected by chronic health conditions.

Satta Sonnie Kollie 

Community health services supervisor and coresearcher, Government of Liberia – Lofa County/REDRESS 

I am Satta Sonnie Kollie from Lofa County, Liberia. I am Community health services supervisor and coresearcher. I am responsible to supervise the Community health assistants under clinic, give health education to our people in the communities, increasing facility delivery and also making our various communities to know the importance of their good health. 

D. Harrison Wenjor

Former Focal Person for TB, Grand Gedeh, Formerly Government of Liberia – Grand Gedeh County/REDRESS 

D. Harrison Wenjor has spent many decades working in community health in Grand Gedeh. He worked as the focal person for TB and has worked closely with people affected by various neglected tropical diseases. He is passionate about community health and improving access to health, particularly for the most marginalised. 

https://www.redressliberia.org/ 

Twitter: @REDRESS_Liberia 

Transcript available here

Global health systems are built on power structures that often exclude the very voices that should be leading the conversation. Funding, publishing, and policymaking have long been dominated by high-income countries, creating systemic barriers to equity.

In this episode, Dr. Shashika Bandara (McGill School of Population and Global Health), Dr. Moses Tetui (Umeå University & University of Waterloo), and Dr. Joseph Mumba Zulu (University of Zambia) discuss two major initiatives that challenge these structures:

The Lancet article: Shifting Power in Global Health Will Require Leadership by the Global South and Allyship by the Global North and The launch of the Journal of Community Systems for Health, a new platform breaking barriers in global publishing and knowledge sharing.

In this episode:

Dr. Shashika Bandara - Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Global and Public Health, School of Population and Global Health, McGill University.

Shashika Bandara is a Sri Lankan post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Global Public Health in the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University. He co-leads McGill University’s research examining policy exemplars successfully addressing structural discrimination with O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health.

Dr. Joseph Mumba Zulu - Associate Professor of Community, School of Public Health, University of Zambia

Joseph M Zulu is a co-founder and Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Community Systems for Health, a platform dedicated to promoting inclusive, socially accountable, and community-driven health systems research. He is an Associate Professor of Community Health at the School of Public Health and has been involved in community-based implementation research projects in different countries across Africa.

Dr. Moses Tetui - Assistant professor, University of Waterloo, Canada and Umeå University, Sweden

Dr. Moses Tetui is a Health Systems Researcher who specialises in using participatory methods to collaborate with diverse communities and stakeholders to address health system challenges. He serves as a founding board member of the Journal of Community Systems for Health. Moses collaborates with researchers, communities, and decision-makers to explore climate change adaptation strategies for communities living in informal settlements across Africa.

Useful links:

• How to prevent equity efforts from losing steam in global health academia
• Imagining a future in global health without visa and passport inequities
• Shifting power in global health will require leadership by the Global South and allyship by the Global North
• The Journal of Community Systems for Health (JCSH)

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about current research and debates within global health.

The podcast cuts across disciplines, including health systems strengthening, gender and intersectionality, tropical diseases (NTDs, TB, Malaria), maternal and child healthcare (antenatal and postnatal care), mental health and wellbeing, vector-borne diseases, climate change and co-production approaches.

If you would like your project or programme to feature in an episode or miniseries, get in touch with the producers of Connecting Citizens to Science,

In this episode we talk to Shahreen Chowdhury and Motto Nganda about their toolkit for participatory health research methods “Supporting Equitable Partnerships in Global Health”. This toolkit presents a whole host of methods which can be used and adapted to connect with communities. 

https://countdown.lstmed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/centre/Participatory%20Health%20Research%20Methods%20toolkit.pdf

Dr Akinola Oluwole 

Dr Akinola Oluwole is an experienced researcher with a special interest in socio-epidemiology of tropical infectious diseases. His multidisciplinary expertise includes spatial disease mapping, monitoring and evaluation of intervention and control programmes and implementation/Health systems research for public health and disease control. He has over Fifteen years’ experience working on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). Recently, Dr Akinola was the programme lead for two Co-production research projects within the COUNTDOWN consortia, one to develop a care package for Female Genital Schistosomiasis and a second to improve the equity of mass drug administration in Nigeria. Both projects utilized innovative Participatory Health Research methods to generate evidence-based information on how to effectively tackle implementation challenges for NTD programme in Nigeria. Dr Akinola has strengthened the capacity of health systems actors, NTD implementers and researchers through training, mentorship and the development of practical guidelines and policy. He is passionate about influencing policy change in Nigeria and Internationally to reduce inequities created by NTDS within the poorest communities. 

https://countdown.lstmed.ac.uk/about-countdown 

Dr Motto Nganda, Research Assistant, LSTM

Dr Motto Nganda is a public health professional and medical doctor with over six years’ experience in the management and implementation of public health disease programmes, including Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), Malaria, Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS; as well as clinical practice in primary health care in Cameroon. Motto also has experience in implementation research, community engagement in health and health systems strengthening in the fields of household air pollution and Neglected Tropical Diseases in low and middle-income countries including Cameroon, Nigeria, and Liberia. Recently, Motto joined the COUNTDOWN consortium at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, a 7-year multidisciplinary research consortium dedicated to investigating and scaling up cost effective and sustainable solutions to control and eliminate neglected tropical medicines in Low- and Middle-income countries. Motto has applied participatory health research approaches and methods to strengthen the capacity of health systems actors and local communities to develop, implement, evaluate, and embed interventions to diagnose, treat and manage women and girls suspected of female genital schistosomiasis at primary healthcare level; and to decentralise planning, management, and implementation of mass drug administration of medicines in Liberia. Motto has increasing interest in strengthening fragile health systems and supporting community health, to contribute to the WHO’s universal health coverage roadmap.   

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/dr-motto-nganda 

Have you heard the term SciArt before? In this episode, we explore what it is and the benefits of combining art and science as a research and communication tool.

Our Co-host for this episode is Elli Wright, Public Engagement Manager at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Elli told us ‘...effective science communication can really connect people and communities with research. Science communicators and public engagement professionals want to reduce the elitism built into society with regards to who is allowed to access scientific knowledge. Science belongs to all of us which is why effective science communication is so important. There are many ways that science can be communicated to the diverse public audience, including through art.’

Natasha Niethamer shared with us, ‘the more we engage others about public health concerns that require global efforts to fight, the more likely we are to inspire community action, driving interest in policy makers and funders. Directly inspiring even one teacher, parent, young person, or community member may indirectly inspire a large network of their own. You may inspire the next major activist of our generation!’

Listen on to find out more about how a playful approach can bring new insights to your work.

This episode features:

Dr Elli Wright - Public Engagement Manager, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Elli has been working in the science communication and public engagement sector at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for nearly 8 years. She is currently studying an MSc. in science communication at the University of the West of England, which has given her a stronger understanding of the theories behind science communication practices. Her research explores the use of autoethnography as a tool to the co-creation of the Tropical Medicine Time Machine by artists Tom Hyatt and Natasha Neithamer (also featured in this episode).

Mark Roughley - Senior Lecturer 3D Digital Art, Liverpool John Moores University

Mark is a Senior Lecturer in 3D Digital Art at Liverpool School of Art and Design and a member of the Face Lab research group that explores faces and art-science applications. Mark trained as a medical artist, gaining his MSc in Medical Art from the University of Dundee, and specialises in visualising anatomy through 3D data acquisition, modelling and fabrication. His research focuses on the affordances of 3D digital technologies for both digital and haptic interaction with anatomical and cultural artefacts. Mark is also the programme leader for the MA Art in Science programme, which provides exciting opportunities for artists and scientists to collaborate and explore the boundaries of art and science.

Tom Hyatt - PhD Student at the Liverpool School of Art & Design, Liverpool John Moores University

Tom is a polymathic artist, musician, scientist, educator, and maker from Rossendale, Lancashire. After graduating with a Masters in physics and philosophy from Oxford University he moved to London to pursue grassroots music and a career in the arts, while teaching maths and physics. He moved back up to Liverpool after receiving a PhD scholarship to study at the Liverpool School of Art and Design. Recently he has been working with Natasha Niethamer to create the ‘Tropical Medicine Time Machine’ for LSTM – a multifaceted piece of sci-art public engagement that encompasses the length and breadth of LSTM’s prolific 125 years.

Natasha Niethamer – SciArtist, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Natasha is a SciArtist commissioned to create a pop up museum for LSTMs 125th Anniversary, along with a set of interactive loan boxes for use in local primary schools. Natasha has a special interest in sci-art activism and public outreach in microbiology and antimicrobial resistance. In 2020, she graduated from the MA Art in...

Our team of Connecting Citizens to Science podcasters are roaming the halls of HSR2022 to bring you the thoughts and takeways of the presenters and delegates after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement. 

In today’s special episode we have: 

Ibrahim Dadari - Immigration Specialist, UNICEF 

Sara Dada - PhD Candidate, University College Dublin 

Anna Socha – Health Policy & Systems Researcher, Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute  

Sarbani Chakraborty – Senior Programme Director, Mixed Health Systems

These delegates share  their thoughts and takeaways from some of the sessions held on 31/10/22.  

More conference coverage coming your way throughout the week! 

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental well-being and climate change linked to health. 

Featuring guest speakers Timeo Mtenga from the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust and Naomi Walker from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, this episode looks as TB treatment challenges and future solutions- we cover topics including: 

• The challenges faced by people living with TB 
• The complexity of TB treatment 
• Guests’ new research on TB treatment, and how this will affect change

Dr Naomi Walker

Senior Clinical Lecturer in Experimental Medicine, LSTM 

Consultant in Infectious Diseases and General Internal Medicine, Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust 

I am a clinical academic specialising in Tropical Medicine and Infectious diseases. My major research interest is TB immunopathology and the influence of HIV infection on TB disease. I completed my PhD at Imperial College London and at University of Cape Town. Before moving to Liverpool, I was a Clinical Lecturer at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In addition to UK, I have clinical experience working in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Australia. 

Timeo Mtenga

Research Clinician, Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust

I am Timeo Mtenga based in Zomba, Malawi. I have mainly studied HIV-TB, particularly in low resource settings. Under the LSHTM project, I am currently conducting two HIV-TB clinical trials (CASTLE and ITB-TBR) with the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust research organisation. In my 5 years of research experience, the STAMP study contributed to policy formulation of HIV-TB management at the national level and internationally informed other partners like WHO. Now I am pursuing a Master's degree in Clinical Trials with the University of London. 

Recorded live at the Eighth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, the episode focuses on the challenges and opportunities of delivering health care in fragile and conflict-affected settings. Collaborating with researchers from the ReBUILD for Resilience consortium, we hear from three inspiring voices tackling displacement, migration, and exclusion in health care.

Dr. Cynthia Maung shares insights on creating governance structures for health care delivery to displaced populations along the Thai-Myanmar border. Dr. Roshan Pokhrel from Nepal reflects on using research to address workforce challenges amid migration and climate change. Finally, Lydia DiStefano highlights the critical role of community health workers in providing equitable care to vulnerable populations and shares exciting plans for the upcoming Community Health Workers Symposium in Bangkok.

This episode offers vital lessons for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers committed to building resilient health systems in fragile settings.

In this episode:

From ReBUILD for Resilience:

Karen Miller – Communications Officer, Liverpool School Tropical Medicine

Shophika Regmi - Senior Manager: Health System Research, Evaluation and Learning, HERD International, Nepal

Thazin La - Research manager for the health systems research programme, Burnet Institute Myanmar

Our Guests:

Dr. Cynthia Maung – Mae Tae Clinic

Dr. Roshan Pokhrel – Secretary Ministry of Health Population, Nepal

Lydia DiStefano – Senior Research and Advocacy Manager, Community Partners International

Useful links:

• The 4th International CHW Symposium
• HSR Global Symposium on Health Systems Research | HSR 2024
• Introducing ReBUILD for Resilience

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about current research and debates within global health.

The podcast covers topics like health systems strengthening, gender and intersectionality, tropical diseases (NTDs, TB, Malaria), maternal and child healthcare, mental health, vector-borne diseases, climate change, and co-production approaches.

If you would like your project or programme to feature in an episode or mini-series, get in touch with the producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.

In this episode, we discuss the challenges faced by the health workforce in fragile settings such as conflict zones and areas hit by political and economic crises. Our guests share their first-hand experiences and insights on how health systems and workers strive to provide care under extreme conditions. This episode is part of the six-part mini-series "Stories of Resilience: Local Lives and Health Systems," brought to you by ReBUILD for Resilience (see 'useful links' for links to the other episodes from this series).

During this episode, there are repeated references to war and conflict with first-hand experiences of illness and trauma which you may find distressing.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to Connecting Citizens to Science

00:42 Introduction to the Health Workforce in Fragile Settings

01:20 Insights from Dr. Nasher Al-Aghbari in Yemen

01:46 Global Challenges with Dr. Jim Campbell

02:32 Welcoming Remarks by Dr. Kim Ozano

02:53 Dr. Wesam Mansour on Health Workers in Gaza

04:08 Dr. Nasher’s Experiences in Yemen

07:39 The Role of WHO with Dr. Jim Campbell

10:53 System vs. Individual Resilience

12:46 International Support and Building Resilience

15:18 Emergency Response vs. Long-Term Efforts

17:21 Health Worker Migration Issues

21:55 Key Advice for Strengthening Resilience

24:48 Concluding Remarks and Call to Action

In this episode:

Dr Wesam Mansour, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK.

Wesam is a physician, a Paediatric and Neonatology Specialist and a Fellow at the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua), with a Ph.D. in Health Policy and Management. At Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Wesam is a research associate at the Department of International Public Health. For the ReBUILD programme, she coordinates the work with ReBUILD’s country partners, particularly those in Lebanon.

Dr Nasher Al-Aghbari - Head of Paediatric Department, Al-Thawra General Modern Teaching Hospital, Sana'a, Yemen.

Nasher Al-Aghbari is a paediatric consultant in the Paediatric Department at Al-Thawra General Teaching Modern Hospital in Sana’a, Yemen. He is the Head of the Paediatric Emergency Department. He is also a member of the Teaching Panel in the Arab Board Membership. He has undertaken research for the past 15 years. As part of his Masters degree and PhD at LSTM, Dr. Al-Aghbari worked on blood diseases in children in Africa and Yemen and pulmonary childhood tuberculosis in Yemen.

Mr Jim Campbell - Director of the Health Workforce Department, World Health Organization, Geneva.

Jim Campbell is the Director of the Health Workforce Department at the World Health Organisation. He oversees the development and implementation of global public goods, evidence and tools to inform investments in the education, employment and retention of the health and care workforce in pursuit of global health security, universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Useful links:

• Gender, health systems resilience and equity - Connecting Citizens to Science - In the second episode of a six-part mini-series by ReBUILD for Resilience, we explore the intersection of gender and health systems in fragile settings. Hosted by Kim and co-hosted by Abriti Arjyal from HERD International, the episode features insights from Dr. Rouham Yamout from the American University of Beirut and Dr. Val Percival from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) at Carleton University. The discussion covers the impact of gender dynamics on health systems during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and armed conflicts, emphasising community-led, participatory approaches to promote gender equality and resilience...

In this episode we are celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD). This year’s theme is #EmbraceEquity and aims to get the world talking about why "equal opportunities are no longer enough" - and can in fact be exclusionary, rather than inclusive.

We will be discussing the differences between the terms equity and equality and why is it important to understand, acknowledge and value this.

Definitions of these terms are provided by IWD campaign, they highlight the differences.

• Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities.

• Equity recognises that each person has different circumstances, and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

To explore what this means in reality, we have two guests who will speak about the work they are doing to promote equity. They unearth differences as well as similarities across their respective contexts, but draw the same conclusions,

“... it's a process. It takes time. You do get some gains and you should celebrate those. So don't feel frustrated and its small steps and nudging and knowing who to reach out to. Most importantly, listening to the voice of the community and those that we want to work with, that's the most critical part”.

About our guests:

Dr Lilian Otiso - Executive Director, LVCT Health

Dr. Lilian Otiso is the Executive Director of LVCT Health, a large Kenyan NGO that carries out programs on HIV, sexual & reproductive health, gender-based violence, mental health and community health reaching over 1 million individuals annually.

She is a medical doctor with an MBA in Health Care Management currently pursuing a PhD in Global Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Her PhD topic is on accountability for universal health coverage among pregnant adolescents/teenage mothers. Lilian has over 15 years’ clinical, programming and research experience in government and NGO sectors at senior management level. She has been a Principle Investigator and co-investigator of several research studies. She is passionate about the community and has conducted several studies and projects on community health. She has contributed to Kenyan and global WHO guidelines and policies and published several documents and peer reviewed articles. She is the winner of the Trocaire Oscar Romero Award 2021 for protecting vulnerable communities during COVID 19.

Dr. Renu Khosla - Director, Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE)

Dr. Kholsa is the Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE). Her core values are designed to include, level-up and connect urban low-income communities. She seeks to unthink and reimagine slum development; nudging a change from top-down to bottom-up and state to people-led development. Her work is aimed at strengthening local government capacity for: participative planning, information visualization and analytics using spatial and social media technologies, localizing and de-engineering solutions and strategies and simplifying institutions. Her work has led to deepening of the policy discourse on urban poor and access to services.

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about the methods and approaches that researchers apply to connect with communities and co-produce solutions to global health challenges.

The podcast covers wide ranging topics such as NTD’s, NCD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to community engagement and power dynamics.   

If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.  

In this weeks episode we have a conversation with Professor Sayoki Mfinanga, Director and Chief Research Scientist for NIMR Muhimbili Cenre, Honorary Professor of Global Health at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Dar es Salaam, and Adjunct Professor at Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Arusha. Professor Sayoki shares key learning about: 

•  engaging with East African governments to address NCD care 
• expert patients who have suggested new ways of working that have challenged professionals to rethink their knowledge base 
• the importance of strengthening primary health care.   

Professor Sayoki Mfinanga

Director and Chief Research Scientist, National Institute of Medical Research, Muhimbili Cenre Tanzania 

Professor Mfinanga is the Director and Chief Research Scientist for NIMR Muhimbili Cenre, Honorary Professor of Global Health at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Honorary Lecturer at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Dar es Salaam, and Adjunct Professor at Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Arusha, Tanzania. He is leading several scientific research networks in Africa. He is Deputy Director-of Respond Africa, as well as Deputy Director for Afrique one ASPIRE consortium, and Coordinator of TB node of excellence in East Africa under East Africa Consortium for Clinical Research (EACCR2). 

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/dr-sayoki-mfinanga  

https://inteafrica.org/ 

In this week’s episode we focus on climate change and its impacts on malaria specifically. Our guests Remy Hoek Spaans from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Clinton Nkolokhosa from the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme (MLW) will be discussing the effect of floods in Malawi created by extreme weather events and their impact on malaria. Our guests talk about:  

• partnerships with local sugar producers who help to ensure accurate and timely data for factors such as soil permeability, rainfall, temperatures 
• how climate knowledge combined with local knowledge can help predict patterns of disease transmission and keep track of flooding and its impacts 
• the use of open access tools and humanitarian data to inform decision making and stimulate positive change for vulnerable communities and those affected by climate change 
• plans to develop online intuitive tools to share knowledge and co-develop mitigation strategies to disease risk from climate change 

Remy Hoek Spaans 

PhD candidate, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

I am currently working on malaria epidemiology in Malawi, with a focus on environmental and climatological drivers. My most recent project, for which field work has just been completed, will look at the impact of flooding on malaria epidemiology.  One of the first noticeable effects of climate change will be an increase in extreme weather events. In March 2019, Cyclone Idai had a devastating impact on the population of southern Malawi. I would like to understand how the spatial distribution of malaria cases has changed in response to the floods in an agricultural landscape. I have access to routinely collected daily health records and satellite imagery to investigate this at a fine scale. With an increase in extreme weather events in the future, it is crucial to learn how this will affect malaria transmission, to build resilient health systems. 

https://rstmh.org/about-us/who-we-are/student-ambassadors/remy-hoek-spaans 

https://twitter.com/remyhs?lang=en 

https://rstmh.org/news-blog/blogs/world-malaria-day-early-career-grant-research-into-malaria 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/remyhoekspaans/?originalSubdomain=nl 

Mr Clinton Nkolokosa 

Masters fellow, Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme (MLW)

Clinton Nkolokosa is a MSc Fellow within the Vector Biology group at Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome, Blantyre Malawi.  Clinton’s current project which is being funded by the Wellcome Trust, is titled Measuring the impact of past, present and future environmental changes on schistosomiasis transmission in southern Malawi. Overall, his work is focuses on advanced spatial analysis in environmental and health, and in the intersection of these research areas. This includes the application of remote sensing in crisis mapping and predictive environmental modelling to uncover snail-schistosome distribution and dry season malaria transmission in a changing climate. His particular focus is using cutting-edge geospatial statistical tools to help improve capacity for prevention, preparedness and response to public health, climate and environmental risks. 

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On today’s episode we are joined by Joan Muela from PASS-Suisse/Rovira i Virgili University and Yoriko Masunaga from the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp/University of Amsterdam who share their experiences of engaging with communities to improve malaria trial implementation. Have a listen to learn about: 

• The Community Lab of Ideas for Health (CLIH), a participatory approach for developing community-based solutions to trial implementation strategy challenges 
• How ethnographic research forms an important entry point of interaction between communities and research teams 
• Working with communities in the Gambia and the how the long-standing influence of the MRC Unit The Gambia impacts research dynamics

Joan Muela Ribera, PhD and MSc

Lecturer and senior researcher, PASS-Suisse and MARC at Rovira i Virgili University

My field of research is medical anthropology applied to Global Health projects. I did fieldwork in a variety of African, Asian and American countries, mostly in the field of infectious diseases. My area of expertise is participatory implementation research and systemic evaluation. I strongly believe that people in the communities where we work are the ultimate actors and decision-makers. Our role as Social Science experts is to provide useful and solid information for decision-making, as well as a frame and a systematic approach to co-create and co-implement the project.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joan-Muela-Ribera 

https://www.antropologia.urv.cat/en/about/people/adjunct-faculty/ 

Yoriko Masunaga, MPH

Pre-doc, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp / University of Amsterdam

I am a PhD candidate (in medical anthropology) focusing on community participatory implementation research in malaria elimination interventions. With years of working experience in both research and implementation, I am convinced that communities play pivotal role in integrating research and implementation and in tackling global health issues in holistic and transdisciplinary manner, as a co-designer and co-implementer of research and implementation. 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yoriko-Masunaga 

In this episode, we discuss meaningful participation and inclusion when working with marginalised communities. We draw on research approaches from the Reducing the Burden of Severe Stigmatising Skin Diseases (REDRESS) research programme that aims to reduce illness, stigma, social exclusion, and poverty caused by severe stigmatising skin diseases (SSSDs) in Liberia. Since 2019 REDRESS has been co-developing new knowledge together with researchers, patients and programme implementers that directly respond to priority health needs detailed in the country’s ‘Investment Plan for Building a Resilient Health System’.

Hannah Berrian who is a Research Fellow for the Patient Engagement and Person-Centred Approaches thematic area for REDRESS and Shahreen Chowdhury, a researcher and PhD student at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine join us in a discussion about participation and inclusion and how these impact the partnerships and power dynamics that exist when trying to improve the health and wellbeing of marginalised people.

Episode guests:

Miss Hannah Berrian - Research Fellow, UL-PIRE Africa Center

Hannah Berrian obtained a Master’s degree in Public Health (MPH) from Cuttington Graduate School of Professional Studies in Liberia. She served as Liberia’s Mental Health Research Capacity Building Coordinator for Youth FORWARD, the U.S.-National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funded project from a collaboration between the Boston College of Social Work in Massachusetts, U.S., College of Medicine of the Allied Health Sciences (CoMAS) of the University of Sierra Leone, and UL-PIRE Africa Center at the University of Liberia, respectively.

She has several years of professional experience in project management, qualitative and quantitative research, programme implementation, qualitative data analysis, and building capacity for mental health research, among others. Hannah is a Research Fellow for the Patient Engagement and Person-Centred Approaches thematic area on Health Systems Strengthening for Reducing the Burden of Severe Stigmatizing Skin Diseases (REDRESS) consortium.

Ms Shahreen Chowdhury - Research Assistant, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Shahreen Chowdhury is a social scientist, with a background in public health and geography. She currently works as a research assistant and PhD student at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. She obtained her Masters in Public Health in International Development at the University of Sheffield and has varied local and international NGO experience in diverse settings on community health programmes.

Shahreen is particularly interested in the links between equity, mental health and disability inclusion, and community based participatory research. Her PhD explores mainstreaming the rights of people with psychosocial disabilities in Bangladesh, Liberia and Lebanon. In her current work, Shahreen is passionate about using creative participatory methods to amplify the voices and experiences of vulnerable groups affected by chronic illness and disability. Shahreen has extensive experience in working with co-researchers using photovoice, storytelling and art based participatory methods. Shahreen works in Neglected Tropical Disease programmes in West Africa and South Asia with a focus on co-production, designing, implementing and evaluating case detection and community based psychosocial support systems.

Useful links:

• DOWNLOAD A TOOLKIT FOR PARTICIPATORY HEALTH RESEARCH METHODS - Download and access a toolkit of PHR paradigms, methodologies and methods that can be selected and applied by researchers aiming to maximise inclusion, participation, and the achievement of more equitable research partnerships.

In this episode we hear from Mary, a TB survivor who shares her inspirational journey from initial sickness to embarking on multiple complex treatments, lengthy isolation, recovery and finally to unending dedication to offer support, positivity and hope for others living with TB. Key learning and lessons in this story for researchers, policy makers and global health planners.

Mary  Mpakibi

Retention Officer and TB expert champion, Kawempe Home Care 

My name is Mpakibi Mary, am 28 years and currently staying in Kyebando, Kawempe Kampala Uganda. I am working at Kawempe Home Care (KHC) as a Retention Officer and TB expert champion. KHC is a community Based Organisation caring for people living with HIV/AIDS, TB cancer and other health related illness. 

I also work as a cab, Community Advisory Board member with Makerere Lung Institute and a member of Uganda Country Advisory Group (UCAG) under the Light TB project bridging the gap between researchers, health facilities and the communities. 

Some of my contribution are attributed to TB case notification through contact tracing and Community sensitization and screening which contribute to the Total TB cases identified at Kawmpe Home Care and other health facilities as shown in reports attached to the links 

https://treattb.org/2019/03/08/mary-mpakibi-from-stream-uganda-tells-her-story/ 

 https://kawempehomecare.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/KHC-Annual-Report-2019-20-Final-1.pdf 

https://twitter.com/Lung_Institute?t=xTdKZpZ7fLqnDdA4FtANIQ&s=08 

https://twitter.com/StopTB?s=08 

https://twitter.com/search?q=USAID%20ON%20TB&t=Xlb1A5FcSzFUGCoyJza87Q&s=08 

Hello Listeners! In this episode we are joined by the Centre for Health Systems Strengthening at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, also known as CHESS. In this first episode of a two-part mini-series focusing on health systems strengthening, we talk about health diplomacy and why it is needed.

We hear from Dr. Joanna Raven and Dr. Kerry Millington, who have both been working in global health for over 20 years and are passionate about embedding both health systems strengthening approaches and community knowledge into political commitments and policy reforms.

Bringing a perspective from the fields of maternal and child health, lung health and tuberculosis, Dr Uzochukwu Egere co-hosts this episode where we discuss health diplomacy as a new field for academics and healthcare professionals. One that is about making connections, sharing intel and learning how the United Nations and other High-Level Meetings work, so we can effectively share evidence quickly in often extremely short windows of opportunity, so policy makers can listen and act.

Dr Uzochukwu Egere - Senior Research Associate, Emergency Obstetric and Quality of Care Unit, Department of International Public Health (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine)

Uzo is a paediatrician and public health researcher with extensive experience in multidisciplinary global health research. His research interest is in implementation research and health systems strengthening to tackle inequities in the fields of Maternal and Child health, Lung health and Tuberculosis. Uzo’s work focuses on health and health systems challenges relevant to low-and middle-income settings and facilitates interactions between researchers and consumers of research outputs (the community) to ensure timely policy change, uptake of interventions, and universal health coverage.

Dr Joanna Raven - Reader in health systems, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Jo has worked in global health for more than 25 years, focusing on strengthening health systems. Jo is a researcher with a passion for co-designing and implementing health system research with local stakeholders including community members, health workers, health managers and decision makers. As a health worker herself, Jo’s work focuses on supporting the health workforce to deliver people-centred care that is of good quality and leaves no one behind.

Dr Kerry Millington – Research Uptake Manager, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Kerry has been working in global health for over 20 years with a keen focus on ending the tuberculosis epidemic. A key part of her work is developing trusted relationships with range of stakeholders to work in partnership, in collaboration and in a coordinated way ensuring the academic and health professional voice credibly informs decisions that impact on health. This can range from co-creating research ideas to influencing policy and political commitments. A key stakeholder to engage with is the voice of TB survivors and advocates to accelerate action for those in most need of innovations in TB care and prevention to transform lives.

Research programme links:

ReBUILD for Resilience - Research on health systems in fragile contexts

PERFORM2scale – Scaling up PERFORM

ReDRESS - Strengthening people-centred health systems for people affected by severe stigmatising skin diseases in Liberia

LIGHT - Aims to support policy and practice in transforming gendered pathways to health for people with TB in urban...

In this week's episode, we will be talking about the economic impact of non-communicable diseases or NCDs on east African communities. Guests include Dr. Steven Waititi, a Patient representative on Respond-Africa Partnership and author of “Conquering HIV and AIDS: My personal experience of living with HIV” and Josephine Birungi, a Senior Research Scientist based at Medical Research Council/Uganda Virus Research Institute (MRC/UVRI) in Entebbe. They discuss: 

• Financial/economic barriers for patients and communities affected by NCDs 
• What having an NCD means for patient finances 
• How integrated care addresses these problems 

Dr Josephine Birungi

Senior Research Scientist, MRC +UVRI& LSHTM Uganda Research Unit 

Dr Josephine Birungi is a Senior Research Scientist based at Medical Research Council/Uganda Virus Research Institute (MRC/UVRI) in Entebbe. She is currently working on a number of research project within the Respond Africa Partnership, as study lead in Uganda. Projects include 

INTEAFRICA which is evaluating a novel approach of integrated clinical management of HIV-infection, diabetes, and hypertension in Tanzania and Uganda and INTECOMM which is evaluating community based integrated care for people living with HIV, Diabetes and Hypertension. 

https://inteafrica.org/ 

@josephinebirun1 

Dr Steven Watiti

Patient representative on Respond-Africa Partnership

After studying Medicine at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, Dr. Watiti, was a medical officer, Rubaga Hospital, Kampala from 1985-1988. He practiced medicine privately from 1988-2004 at Entebbe Road clinic and JOY Medical Centre Ndeeba, Kampala. From 2004, he has been working at Mildmay Uganda, a leading HIV and AIDS service organisation. An HIV activist and ardent advocate for improved and sustainable health for all, Dr. Watiti believes with hindsight that he acquired HIV between 1985 and 1986 while working as a junior medical officer. In 2000, he began ARVs after contracting tuberculosis, cancer (Kaposi’s sarcoma), and meningitis. In 2006, he started his weekly column on HIV in New Vision, Uganda’s leading daily newspaper. His column appears Mondays under the heading: “Towards zero: with Doctor Watiti”. He has published two books on HIV: “HIV and AIDS: 100 Commonly Asked Questions” and “Conquering HIV and AIDS: My personal experience of living with HIV”. Dr Waititi works with the Respond Africa partnership as an expert patient ensuring that patient needs, views and voices are heard and considered and addressed when designing and implementing research projects. 

https://inteafrica.org/ 

@WatitiStephen 

In this week's episode we hear from Emmanuel Zaizay who is a peer researcher in the REDRESS programme and is affected by Buruli Ulcer, a neglected tropical disease. He shares with us the value of learning new skills, through becoming a co-researcher, which has helped him better connect with his community and contribute to the improvement of medical and psychosocial services for people living with NTDs. 

Emmanuel Zaizay

Co-researcher, REDRESS

I am Emmanuel Zaizay from Lofa County, Voinjama District. I work with REDRESS as a coresearcher and I was recruited as a patient affected person as I was diagnosed with Buruli ulcer. I also serve as a data collector, I work in photovoice settings and participatory methods such as bodymapping and focus group discussions. Currently, I am with the coresearcher team in Lofa County. 

https://www.redressliberia.org/  

Twitter: @REDRESS_Liberia

Fasseneh Zeela Zaizay

REDRESS Country Director, Actions Transforming Lives/REDRESS

Mr Fasseneh Zeela Zaizay serves as the Liberian Country Program Manager for REDRESS, providing overall management for the project in Liberia. Zeela holds B.Sc. in Nursing (Magna Cum Laude), master’s in public health, Diploma of Advanced Studies in Health Care Management, and certificate in monitoring and evaluation. Zeela co-designed Cuttington University’s clinical outreach program and served as its coordinator as well as lectured nursing for 7 years. Before joining REDRESS, he served as the Liberian Country Director of MAP International and Technical Assistant to the Ministry of Health. In those roles, he engaged in strengthening the Liberian health system, supporting the integration of NTDs into the health system, and conducting research on health system strengthening and NTDs. He is a co-creator of the Liberian Strategic Plan for the Integrated Management of NTDS. He is a co-founder of Actions Transforming Lives, a registered Liberian charity and partner on REDRESS also providing financial and technical support to the Ministry of Health NTDs Program, as well as giving less fortunate communities access to safe water and improved livelihoods. 

https://www.redressliberia.org/about-us/people/actions-transforming-lives/fasseneh-zeela-zaizay/ 

Twitter: @REDRESS_Liberia 

Twitter: @FZZaizay 

In this week’s episode we hear about citizen science approaches for tackling flooding and waterborne hazards in Ethiopia. Our guests Dr Alemseged Tamiru Haile, Senior Researcher from the International Water Management Institute and David Warne, Professor of Environmental Systems Modelling from Newcastle University are part of the GCRF Global Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub. Their work with citizen scientists aims to improve awareness and action on flooding risks and waterborne hazards in Ethiopia through co-creation of knowledge and development of new management systems for water. Our guests will share the value of citizen science approaches from enhancing community understanding of their environment to resolving data gaps for risk assessment, modelling, and better decision-making. They share with us: 

• Definitions and understanding of citizen science approaches and co-creation of knowledge 
• The involvement of citizens in testing water quality and flow, monitoring ecological status in aquaria, analysing and interpreting data and communicating findings to the community. 
• How climate change and resulting changes in rainfall and water flow created hazards for small scale farmers which stimulated the co-design of a new early warning system by scientists, communities and government 

Dr Alemseged Tamiru Haile

Senior Researcher, International Water Management Institute 

Dr. Alemseged Tamiru Haile is Senior Research of hydrology and hydrological modelling at International Water Management Institute (IWMI). He earned his PhD in Spatial Hydrology at University of Twente, The Netherlands. He is leading and contributing to several research projects that aim to improve water security, fill hydrological data gaps and improve flood risk management. Alemseged enjoys sharing experience with early carrier researchers and students. 

https://www.watersecurityhub.org/resources/citizen-science-bottom-management-shallow-groundwater  

https://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/2020/10/can-citizen-science-help-to-fill-hydrology-data-gaps-in-ethiopia/  

Dr David Werner

Professor Environmental Systems Modelling, Newcastle University 

Dr. David Werner is Professor of Environmental Systems Modelling at Newcastle University, UK. He earned his PhD in Environmental Sciences at EPFL in Switzerland. He works with colleagues and communities in Africa, South America, and Asia towards ubiquitous genomics in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation for all. This includes the co-development and testing of a suitcase laboratory for water quality testing. David enjoys doing fieldwork with his colleagues and students, and life-long learning about the wonders of nature and human follies. 

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/engineering/staff/profile/davidwerner.html 

https://www.ukri.org/about-us/research-outcomes-and-impact/lab-in-a-suitcase-could-provide-safer-water-for-millions/ 

https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/davidwerner/ 

In this special episode, recorded live at the 8th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR2024) in Nagasaki, we explore key themes shaping the global health landscape. This episode brings together voices from the halls of HSR2024, where our host and researchers from the ReBUILD for Resilience programme have been capturing insightful conversations with experts on resilience, climate, and just health systems.

Hosted by Dr. Kim Ozano, this episode includes interviews with inspiring speakers tackling complex global health challenges, from conflict-affected settings to ethical health financing.

Join us as we share dynamic discussions and explore what they mean for the future of health systems.

In this episode

From ReBUILD for Resilience:

Rouham Yamout – Programme Coordinator, American University of Beruit

Karen Miller – Communications Officer, Liverpool School Tropical Medicine

Our Guests:

Ana Amaya – Board Member, Health Systems Global

Dr. Ali Ardalan - Regional Advisor and Head of Health Systems Resilience Unit, WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region.

Dr. Usman Gwarzo – LAFIYA programme, Nigeria

Useful links:

• Introducing ReBUILD for Resilience - health systems research
• 8th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR2024)

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about current research and debates within global health.

The podcast covers topics like health systems strengthening, gender and intersectionality, tropical diseases (NTDs, TB, Malaria), maternal and child healthcare, mental health, vector-borne diseases, climate change, and co-production approaches.

If you would like your project or programme to feature in an episode or mini-series, get in touch with the producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.

This episode features Emerson Rogers, the NTD case management lead in the Ministry of Health Liberia and Eric Whey, the mental health and psychosocial coordinator for Grand Bassa County Health Team, Liberia. Together they discuss how Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) and mental health services are being integrated at the primary health care level and the importance of advocating for sustained services for tackling mental health more generally. Tosin Adekeye, our co-host for this series discusses the cultural, logistical and community aspects that are being considered and the lessons that could be applied in other similar contexts. 

Dr. Oluwatosin Adekeye

Assistant Director of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry Ahmadu Bello University Hospital Zaria Kaduna

A social scientist with varied experience in both clinical and research aspects of health among communities in Northern Nigeria. As a Clinical Psychologist, his work has been both on mental and behavioral disorders and the effects of chronic disease on the well-being of patients and caregivers. As a Social Scientist, he just concluded a study that documented the well-being of people with stigmatizing skin diseases and established a care and support group within the community. More recently he is working on developing a well-being tool for parents and children with disability. 

Twitter: @TosinOluw, @Sightsavers

Eric T. Weah

Mental Health and Psychosocial support pillar lead for EBOLA and the COVID 19 RESPONSE, lecturer at the Grand Bassa Community College. 

The mental health department (MHD) is part of the community health department and works with programs to consider a more holistic biopsychosocial approach. This approach seeks to look at the psychological impact that a condition will have on an individual, the family, the community and society at large. It also provides services for the vulnerable groups such as people living with disability, those in prison and at-risk youth. The mental health department also developed the user group and collaborative approach with faith based organisation, traditional healers and religious leaders to help in improve mental health care. The MHD also works with the Community Health Focal persons to ensure community health workers identify, follow up and refer cases to service delivery point for management.

Emerson Rogers

National Coordinator for Case Management of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs)

Management Committee member- REDRESS 

Ministry of Health, Liberia 

Mr Emerson Rogers has a key role in the Management Committee of REDRESS providing ongoing guidance and support as the National Coordinator for Case Management NTDs in Liberia. 

He manages the coordination of all Case Management, project planning, implementation, supervision, research, and timely reporting of progress. Enforcing strategies to ensure adherence to timely interventions for NTDs. Emerson has 14 years’ experience working as a Ministry of Health clinician in Liberia in several hospitals.  He served as Clinical Coordinator at the National Ebola Treatment Unit and served as Master Trainer Team Lead for Keep Safe Keep Serving. Emerson served as National Program Director for the Men’s Health Screening Program- MOH between 2015-2017. He worked alongside WHO and CDC UK and was responsible for conducting Real Time PCR testing of the semen of Ebola survivors to determine it contained fragments of the virus and therefore help to get a better understanding of the persistence of the virus in the semen of male survivors. 

Twitter: @redress_liberia 

Gender and Health Systems in Fragile Settings

In the second episode of a six-part mini-series by ReBUILD for Resilience, we explore the intersection of gender and health systems in fragile settings (see 'useful links' for links to the other episodes from this series). Hosted by Kim and co-hosted by Abriti Arjyal from HERD International, the episode features insights from Dr. Rouham Yamout from the American University of Beirut and Dr. Val Percival from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) at Carleton University. The discussion covers the impact of gender dynamics on health systems during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and armed conflicts, emphasising community-led, participatory approaches to promote gender equality and resilience in health systems.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to Connecting Citizens to Science

00:29 Exploring Gender and Health Systems Resilience

01:17 Introducing Our Experts and Their Perspectives

02:30 The Impact of Gender on Health Systems and Resilience

03:22 Global Insights on Gender, Health, and Resilience

10:05 Participatory Approaches to Addressing Gender Norms

18:21 Concluding Thoughts and Advice on Gender in Health Systems

21:05 Farewell and Invitation to Explore More In this episode

In this episode:

Abriti Arjyal -Research Manager, HERD International

Abriti is leading on HERD International’s qualitative and participatory approaches in ReBUILD for Resilience. She has a focus on gender and intersectionality. She has experience in public health, health systems, service delivery research, social science and gender and equity. She has led formative and operational field studies, evaluation studies, and literature reviews, developing expertise in design, implementation and analysis of qualitative research, rapid ethnography and various community and participatory based approaches. Most of Abriti’s work has focused on gender and resilience, including maternal and child health, antibiotic resistance, disaster risk reduction and resilience, nutrition, diabetes and violence against women.

Dr. Rouham Yamout – Project Coordinator, American University of Beirut

Rouham works at the American University of Beirut. She was a medical doctor for 20 years before moving into public health where she now focuses on health system research and strengthening access to quality healthcare. She has extensive research experience with projects involving internally displaced people’s mental health, the ethics of research in war time and waterpipe smoking among adolescents. Rouham has worked for International Red Cross where she was a trainer in the clinical management of rape and sexual assault, Lebanese University as an instructor in research design for nursing students and in UN organisations looking at immunisation, nutrition and refugees’ health.

Dr. Valerie Percival - Associate Professor, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs

Val’s research focuses on the impact of violent conflict on the health of civilians, backlash against gender equality, as well as gender norms and health care delivery. She is a Commissioner for The Lancet Commission on Peaceful Societies through Health and Gender Equality and led the research and writing of the Commission Report published in September 2023. In partnership with the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada, she is the Principal Investigator for GenLab – a Community of Practice in Mozambique - that works to understand how gender norms influence access to and delivery of healthcare services. She held at fellowship at the Wilson Center in Washington DC. She has worked with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, the International Crisis Group directing their Kosovo office, the UNHCR, and PRIO.

Useful links:

In this episode we talk to Dr. Tosin Adekeye and Wede Tate about the method ‘Photovoice’ that was used with people affected by severe stigmatising skin diseases in Nigeria and Liberia. We hear about how Photovoice can: 

• Enable people to capture their everyday experiences of living with their condition  
• Connect people with decision makers through dissemination of photos and narratives 
• Strengthen agency and voice of those affected by skin diseases to communicate peer led solutions to improve their health and wellbeing 

Wede Leoni Seekey-Tate, University of Liberia (UL-PIRE) / REDRESS, Human Resource Management, Research Fellow 

Wede Leoni Seekey Tate is the Research Fellow for Human Resource Management (HRM) on the REDERESS project. In her current role, she provides support in the design of effective integrated strategies for the sustainable, acceptable, and affordable case detection, referral, and treatment of Severe Stigmatizing Skin Diseases (SSSDs). She also contributes to the development of recommendations for the scale up of quality effective interventions within the existing health system infrastructure; and guides analysis of impact of human resource management practices on case detection, referral, and treatment of SSSDs with a specific focus on performance management perspectives. She has worked with the University of Liberia - Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (UL-PIRE) on an HIV research project. She has supported the Liberian Ministry of Health through WHO, to finalize Liberia’s Neglected Tropical Diseases Master Plan including strategy, budget, and one-year operational plan.  She obtained a Master of Public Health from Cuttington University in Liberia and diploma in Health Care Management in Tropical Countries from the Swiss Tropical Institute of Public Health. 

www.redressliberia.org  

https://www.redressliberia.org/our-approach/community-engagement-and-involvement/ 

Dr Oluwatosin Adekeye, Department of Psychiatry, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaria, Kaduna State 

Oluwatosin Adekeye is a social science researcher who has worked with a number of organisations especially in the area of community participation and empowerment. His initial work was a research funded by the TDR on Community Directed Interventions. This provided the basis for subsequent social science and public health work with various communities in northern Nigeria. His interests recently is research relating to health and wellbeing and how various segments of the community are able to report their lived experiences, such that it can foster engagement and translate into programmatic change.  

Our team of podcasters were roaming the halls of HSR2022, the Seventh Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, capturing the conversations ‘in the halls’ after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement. 

In this final HSR2022 episode, host Kim Ozano and guests share their thoughts and takeaways from the conference.  Our host, Kim, presented at HSR2022 sessions as part of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s (LSTM) cohort.  As LSTM mark 125 years of global health research and look to the next 125 years, she summarises  the themes that reoccurred in conversation with other delegates and presenters.  

This Episode features:

Host of Connecting Citizens to Science podcast: Dr Kim Ozano – Research Director, the SCL Agency 

Bea Egid (co-host) -  MRC PhD Student, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Jhaki A. Mendoza – Research Associate, University of the Philippines  

Maria Van Der Merwe -  Research Coordinator, VAPAR

Vivek Dsouza – Research officer, Institute of Public Health, Bangalore 

Kara Hanson - Professor of Health System Economics and Dean, Faculty of Public Health & Policy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine 

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast connect discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges.

The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change linked to health. 

We have a conversation including our first citizen scientist to kick of 2023. Lou Kellett is an active participant in the Liverpool School of Tropical medicine Swab and Send programme, which is striving to find the next breakthrough in bacteria to defeat antimicrobial resistance.

We also hear from Dr. Adam Roberts, the creator of the programme, and Dr. Amy McLeman, who is taking the bacteria that shows promising results, through to the next stage of investigation in the lab.

Swab and Send is an innovative programme that relies on the anticipation of citizens to infinitely broaden the search for a solution to the AMR problem.

Amy provides us with an insight:

“Antimicrobials can be produced by bacteria or fungus from anywhere; from the soil in your local park to your kitchen sink. These are just two of the places we are looking for the next new antibiotics and it works! We are finding microbes producing interesting antimicrobials that our team are working on characterising, but did you know it can take 10-15 years and over $1.7 billion to develop a new antibiotic from discovery to market. Even then once a new antibiotic is being sold the investment return is less than $50 million on average each year. Research and development costs massively outweigh the financial return”.

About our guests:

Dr. Adam Roberts – Reader, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Adam Roberts leads a research group investigating various aspects of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) from molecular biology and evolution of transferable AMR to genomic surveillance and antimicrobial drug discovery.

Dr. Amy McLeman - Postdoctoral Research Associate, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Amy works as a postdoctoral research associate on discovery and characterisation of novel antimicrobials from environmental isolates. Her work includes outreach to individuals and communities to communicate the importance of AMR and what Swab and Send is doing to tackle this, and to also encourage involvement of the public to take swabs of everything and anything and send them into us to look for the next antibiotic.

Lou Kellett – Active Citizen Scientists, Wales, UK

Lou has worked in local food and farming business for the last couple of decades, including organic farming. An active participant in many citizen science projects, Lou is particularly enthusiastic about the swab and send programme as it creates the opportunity for to share the unique local environmental habitats with the wider world. Lou finds being an active citizen scientist is a great way satiate a hungry sense of curiosity.

Relevant links:

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/public-engagement/swab-send                                   

https://www.facebook.com/swabandsend/

https://www.future-science.com/doi/10.2144/fsoa-2020-0053

#SwabAndSend

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about the methods and approaches that researchers apply to connect with communities and co-produce solutions to global health challenges.

The podcast covers wide ranging topics such as NTD’s, NCD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to community engagement and power dynamics.    

If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, The SCL Agency.   

In this episode, we hear from Dr Rugema Lawrence from the University of Rwanda and Dr Julian Eaton from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and CBM Global Disability and Inclusion. Together they discuss the links between stigma, discrimination, mental wellbeing and chronic health conditions including Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), how these issues are currently being addressed with communities and the importance of ensuring mental health is part of an essential care package. 

Guest host for this series

Dr. Oluwatosin Adekeye

Assistant Director of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry Ahmadu Bello University Hospital Zaria Kaduna

A social scientist with varied experience in both clinical and research aspects of health among communities in Northern Nigeria. As a Clinical Psychologist, his work has been both on mental and behavioral disorders and the effects of chronic disease on the well-being of patients and caregivers. As a Social Scientist, he just concluded a study that documented the well-being of people with stigmatizing skin diseases and established a care and support group within the community. More recently he is working on developing a well-being tool for parents and children with disability.    

Twitter Links:

@TosinOluw

@Sightsavers

Dr Julian Eaton 

Mental Health Director at CBM Global and Assistant Professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Julian Eaton is the Mental Health Director for CBM Global Disability and Inclusion. He works with a team focused on improving access to care and support, and promoting the voice of people with psychosocial disabilities in low and middle income countries. He is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Global Mental Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he is currently leading a number of research projects looking at strengthening community-based mental health care, reform of public mental health systems in Africa, and Neglected Tropical Diseases. He leads the Mental Health Innovations Network at LSHTM, and is Chair of the Bond International NGO Mental Health Group. Julian trained as a psychiatrist in London where he now works, after living and working in West Africa between 2003 and 2017. 

CBM Community Mental Health homepage: 

https://cbm-global.org/what-we-do/community-mental-health 

Blog on community participation: 

https://cbm-global.org/blog/patient-and-communities-at-the-centre 

SUCCEED homepage: 

https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres-projects-groups/succeed 

Twitter:

@julian_eaton 

@CBM_global 

@MHInnovation.net 

@GMentalHealth 

@LSHTM 

@SUCCEEDAfrika

Dr. Lawrence Rugema  

Lecturer, researcher and Consultant University of Rwanda – School of Public Health  

Dr Rugema Lawrence is a public health professional at the University of Rwanda. Most of his research work has focused on mental health and reducing stigma related to mental illness.  Currently he co-leads implementation research on Podoconiosis in Rwanda under NIHR funded Global Research Unit on Neglected Tropical Diseases in collaborator with the Brighton Sussex Medical School. In this particular research, community health workers are critical to in reducing podoconiosis related stigma. Coordinate rapid community health needs assessment through outreach program to inform policy.  

In this week's episode we hear from Detricia Pamba, a patient advocate for people living with diabetes and Prof Kaushik Ramaiya from Shree Hindu Mandal Hospital, Tanzania. Together they paint a vivid picture of what life is like for people living with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in East Africa and what is needed to improve long-term, ‘humanised’ care for patients living with NCDs.

Detricia Pamba

Multi-Media Journalist, Editor and Content Creation Executive, Mwananchi Communications Ltd 

Detricia Pamba is the Content Creation Executive at Mwananchi Communications Ltd, Editor for Mwananchi Scoop and Features writer for The Citizen. Her journalism experience extends on health, business and money management, women and youth, with a mix of arts and entertainment. She is a Type 1 Diabetes patient since 2011 who advocates for the awareness of diabetes in Tanzania through her writings. 

www.linkedin.com/detriciapamba 

www.instagram.com/detriciapamba 

https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/magazines/health-/living-with-type-1-diabetes-detricia-s-story-3875928 

https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/magazines/success/what-you-need-to-know-about-online-privacy-3557866 

@detriciapamba

Prof Kaushik Ramaiya

CEO, Shree Hindu Mandal Hospital, Tanzania 

Professor Ramaiya has been actively involved in research on diabetes for many years and specialised, among other topics, on glucose tolerance and cardiovascular disease risk factors and mainly focused on Indian communities living in Africa. At present, Professor Ramaiya is working with children who have Type 1 diabetes, gestational diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular complications of antiretroviral drugs in HIV/AIDS and Diabetes/TB interaction. As part of the Respond Africa Partnership,, he is working on CD NCD Integration models (MOCCA Study) and will be overseeing  metformin intervention in HIV patients with IGT (META Trial).  

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/dr-kaushik-ramaiya 

https://inteafrica.org/ 

In this episode, we explore the critical role of non-state actors and informal providers in health systems within fragile settings. Our guests share insights on the legitimacy, roles and challenges of informal and non-state actors. This is the fourth episode in the six-part miniseries "Stories of Resilience: Local Lives and Health Systems," brought to you by ReBUILD for Resilience (see ‘useful links’ for links to the other episodes from the series).

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Connecting Citizens to Science

00:14 Overview of ReBUILD for Resilience

00:31 Non-State Actors and Informal Providers in Health Systems

01:12 Introducing the Guests

02:31 Understanding Non-State and Informal Actors

03:19 Current Situations in Myanmar and Sierra Leone

04:59 Roles and Impact of Informal Providers

07:59 Challenges and Coordination in Crisis Situations

14:02 Advice for Improving Health Systems in Fragile Settings

18:04 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In this episode:

Dr. Karin Diaconu - Reader, Research Lead, Institute for Global Health and Development

Karin is a health policy and systems researcher interested in how to achieve better health outcomes for disadvantaged groups and persons living in fragile, conflict affected and vulnerable settings. She has been involved with the ReBUILD for Resilience programme since it began and is interested in understanding how communities and health systems can better work together to support health, particularly in situations where communities have often been disempowered due to longstanding crises.

Dr. Kyu Kyu Than - Research Director, Burnet Institute Myanmar

Kyu Kyu is a health system researcher from Myanmar who is passionate about advocating for gender-equitable and inclusive healthcare access for the most vulnerable population. She is currently a Research Director at Burnet Institute Myanmar and is also one of the Principal Investigator for the ReBUILD consortium. Her expertise and leadership in public health have earned her recognition both nationally and internationally, making her a pivotal figure in shaping health policies and initiatives in Myanmar. She is a researcher who is well known for her dedication and courage towards health policy shift for the health care workers in the least developed communities.

Ayesha Idriss - Principal Investigator, ReBUILD for Resilience - Sierra Leone, Institute for Development (IfD)

Ayesha is a seasoned pharmacist, dedicated educator, and accomplished multidisciplinary researcher. As the research lead at the Institute for Development (IfD) for the ReBUILD for Resilience programme, Ayesha focuses on strengthening health systems in fragile and conflict-affected states. Her research addresses critical health challenges in Sierra Leone, including non-communicable disease interventions, Community Health Workers (CHW) motivation and health policy implementation. Pursuing a PhD in Global Health at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, her doctoral research enhances healthcare delivery in diverse communities, including the informal health sector, emphasising culturally sensitive approaches. Ayesha’s work bridges research and practice, fostering positive change in healthcare systems and promoting equity in access to healthcare services.

Useful Links;

• The Health Workforce in Times of Crisis - Connecting Citizens to Science - This episode is the third part of the six-part mini-series "Stories of Resilience: Local Lives and Health Systems," brought to you by ReBUILD for Resilience. In this episode, we discuss the challenges faced by the health workforce in fragile settings such as conflict zones and areas hit by political and economic crises. Our guests share their first-hand experiences and insights on...

In this two-part mini-series we are focusing on health systems strengthening- what it is, how to do it and what action is needed to ensure that the approach is embedded in discussions at key global events and discussion platforms.

This episode follows on from the first episode from the Centre for Health Systems Strengthening at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (episode 60) which focused on the health diplomacy and how researchers can advocate for health systems strengthening approaches and community voices in health diplomacy spaces.

Today we hear from two advocates who have been acting within health diplomacy spaces and as researchers. We hear from Emmanuel Zaizay, who is affected by the Neglected Tropical Disease Buruli Ulcer, about his experience of growing skills and capacity to communicate the needs of people affected by stigmatising neglected tropical diseases.

We also hear from Maurine Murenga, a TB advocate who has represented the TB community in high level UN meetings. She is open and honest about both the strengths and opportunities of being an advocate, but also what this means to her on a personal level. Her open reflections are really critical to how researchers function when engaging with communities.

Episode guests:

Dr Kerry Millington - Research Uptake Manager, Liverpool of Tropical Medicine

Kerry has been working in global health for over 20 years with a keen focus on ending the tuberculosis epidemic. A key part of her work is developing trusted relationships with range of stakeholders to work in partnership, in collaboration and in a coordinated way ensuring the academic and health professional voice credibly informs decisions that impact on health. This can range from co-creating research ideas to influencing policy and political commitments. A key stakeholder to engage with is the voice of TB survivors and advocates to accelerate action for those in most need of innovations in TB care and prevention to transform lives.

Maurine Murenga - Coordinator of TB Women Global

Maurine Murenga is a passionate advocate for the health, development and human rights of women and children. Maurine’s passion for advocacy is driven by her lived experience, and the inequality and vulnerability that young women and adolescent girls experience in her community.

Maurine is currently the coordinator of TB Women Global, Board Member of Unitaid, Friend of the Fight US and EGPAF Kenya. She is a former board member of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and is also a member of WHO's Global Accelerator for Pediatric Formulations Advisory and Union Working Group Gender Equity in TB. In Kenya – Maurine is a member of the Global Fund Country Coordinating Mechanism and Elimination of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV Committee of Experts.

Emmanuel Zaizay – Co-researcher and advocate, REDRESS, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Emmanuel Zaizay is from Lofa County, Voinjama District. He works with REDRESS as a coresearcher and was recruited as a patient affected person having been diagnosed with Buruli ulcer. He also serves as a data collector, working in photovoice settings and participatory methods such as bodymapping and focus group discussions.

Useful links:

• S8E3 - Being a co-researcher with lived experience of an NTD - Emmanuel Zaizay, who is a peer researcher in the REDRESS programme and is affected by Buruli Ulcer, a neglected tropical disease, features in this earlier epsiode. He shares with us the value of learning new skills, through becoming a co-researcher, which has helped him better connect with his community and contribute to the improvement of medical and...

In this episode we speak with Wafa Alam and Imran Hossain Mithu from BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University about conducting remote community GIS mapping of informal settlements in Bangladesh. We hear about how: 

• Young people living in informal settlements joined as co-researchers to map their community for the first time 
• How WhatsApp was used to strengthen capacity for mapping and build new skills 
• The process of participatory mapping was adapted during COVID-19 restrictions

Wafa Alam, Assistant Coordinator 

BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University 

Wafa Alam is currently working as an Assistant Coordinator at BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University. She is currently involved in ARISE project which focuses on the health and wellbeing of marginalized communities living in urban informal settlements. Under ARISE, she works closely with community researchers and is actively engaged in various community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods. She has also worked in a research that focused on social inclusion through skills development of vulnerable population groups like persons with disabilities and transgender. Her research interests are urban health and governance, and health systems research.  

She completed her Master of Public Health from BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University. She has an undergraduate degree in Bachelor of Science (Biotechnology) from Monash University. 

https://bracjpgsph.org/staff-members.php    

https://www.ariseconsortium.org/about-us/team/   

https://bracjpgsph.org/assets/pdf/Advocacy/communication%20tools/brochures/Journey_to_A_Better_Life_Stories_of_BRAC_Skills_Development_Programme_Graduates.pdf   

https://covid-bracjpgsph.org/front/covid/assets/files/research/brief/Urban_%20Poor%20Lived%20Experiences%20in%20SLums%20ARISE_April%2019_final%20brief%202020-min.pdf   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl4ghkwrs5Q&t=2s   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr8Czk3BvkY&t=40s   

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3608577   

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30162-5/fulltext   

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30158-3/fulltext   

In this episode we will be hearing about a seven year research programme known as COUNTDOWN. COUNTDOWN consisted of multidisciplinary research teams across 4 countries- Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Cameroon and used co-production research approaches to improve the equity and efficiency of health systems interventions to control and eliminate seven Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Research was implemented at each of the health system levels from policy to community and is all documented in the Journal ‘International Health’ as a supplement entitled Stronger together: evidence for collaborative action on neglected tropical diseases. The supplement tells the story of how the programme engaged with people who have lived experience, health workers, and policy makers and really emphasises the importance of togetherness.

Our guests today are Dr Luret Lar who was the programme manager employed by Sightsavers Nigeria, a collaborator on the COUNTDOWN programme, Dr Karsor Kollie who is the Program Director for Neglected Tropical Diseases at the Ministry of Health Liberia and Laura Dean from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine who was the Social Science lead for COUNTDOWN.

Dr Laura Dean – Lecturer, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Laura has worked for the last 15 years in the use of participatory health research methodologies to support community and health systems development across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. Through participatory action research projects, she supports capacity strengthening within communities and health systems so that stakeholders can identify challenges and co-produce solutions. The majority of her work has focused on increasing inclusion and participation of people with lived experience of mental health conditions and chronic infectious diseases of poverty, for example neglected tropical diseases.

Dr. Luret Lar - Medical Doctor, Public Health Physician, Lecturer, University of Jos, Nigeria

Luret was involved in implementation research for seven years in collaboration with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine when she was working for Sightsavers. Her interest and passion about preventive medicine and including the voices of the voiceless have influenced her research career over the years. Luret was interested in inclusivity at all levels of implementation in the neglected tropical diseases programme. This connected her with people affected by neglected tropical diseases and implementers at the community facility, state, and federal levels. She worked closely with these implementers to co-produce solutions to implementation challenges that everyone collectively identified.

Karsor Kollie – Programme Director, Ministry of Health, Liberia

Since 2011, Mr Kollie has established and headed the Liberian Integrated NTDs Prevention and Control Programme and is based within the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. He developed the NTD country master plan which forms the operational national guide for the next 5 years.

Under his leadership the Liberian programme is making excellent progress in MDA control of Lymphatic Filariasis, Onchocerciasis, Schistosomiasis, Soil-transmitted Helminthiasis (STH) where treatment coverage has not gone below 75%, respectively. Alongside this, he is making significant progress in the development and application of new monitoring and evaluation criteria tailoring activities effectively with difficult on-the-ground terrain.

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Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about the methods and approaches that researchers apply to connect with communities and co-produce solutions to global health challenges.

The podcast covers wide ranging topics such as NTD’s, NCD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to...

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 states that we need to “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. The consideration of energy is a central focus for climate change experts as it is responsible for “nearly three-quarters of global emissions”, with energy consumption being one of the biggest sources of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.  SDG7 calls for “affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” by 2030. Its core target includes: Ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services. In this week's episode we will be focused on learning about renewable energy and the links between sustainable development goals such as health and poverty alleviation. We will hear from guests how they are working with people and communities to adapt to cleaner energy whilst considering the impacts on other SDG goals. Flavia Ajambo from CREEC and Professor Jon Lovett from Leeds University share: 

• How the entertainment industry helps disseminate information around renewable energy in an interesting manner 
• The design of microgrids that supply multiple renewable energy sources to orphanages in Uganda. 
• How new energy technologies and innovations developed in a lab are transferred to communities in a sustainable way 
• The importance of capacity strengthening and knowledge dissemination such as policy briefs, massive online open courses, and movies!

Our co-host for this series 

Dr. Ajay Bhave 

Core Research Fellow - Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub, Newcastle University 

I am an interdisciplinary environmental scientist who uses methods from different disciplines to explore how to identify and prioritise actions and plans for adapting to a changing climate. I use scenarios and decision making under uncertainty approaches to co-produce knowledge with wide-ranging stakeholders regarding potential futures and adaptation options. Currently, he collaborates with researchers and stakeholders in Malawi, India, Malaysia, Colombia and Ethiopia to explore the diverse decision contexts, contextual priorities, climate change risks, and adaptation options. After receiving the Jawaharlal Nehru Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, he has worked at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of Leeds. 

Profile: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/engineering/staff/profile/ajaybhave.html  

Publications: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=55584569800  

Twitter: @ajay_bhave 

Flavia Ajambo is a Ugandan communication expert that has for 9years worked closely with renewable energy experts to influence the adoption of renewable energy technologies. On identifying the different patterns on how people absorb information and how it influences their adoption of clean energy, Flavia has worked closely with industry sector players to encourage and develop content packaged into movies, long foam content on YouTube, carousels, tv and radio drama series. These have demonstrated how renewable energy can be utilized and it’s benefits and has helped to drive impact towards the adoption and optimum utilization of renewable energy technologies. 

Professor Jon Lovett is Chair of Global Challenges in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. He started working with engineers on renewable energy whilst...

In this week's episode, we are talking to the Tupumue Project, who applied creative participatory methods alongside clinical data to understand how many children, in two communities in Nairobi, Kenya have lung problems, and to explore children's experiences of lung problems and air pollution. The project used a variety of creative research methods including drawings, drama, walking interviews with go pros, comics, graffiti and others. They even engaged children in co- analysis and theme development.  

Co-host for this episode, Dr. Hellen Meme, told us more about the programme; 

“The choice of the word “Tupumue” (meaning “lets breathe”!) as an identity of the program was because breathing is a function important to all. The Tupumue programme was a complex undertaking considering the broadness of the subject that was covered, in regard to establishing the burden of non-communicable lung diseases in school children and risk factors in both an informal and formal community context. The necessary skill pool had to be wide to achieve this and hence the broad collaboration involving a multidisciplinary team derived from several North and South institutions. For everyone to own the study, we held consultative meetings through which we established a niche for everyone to participate. We are in the process of widely disseminating our study findings and are currently sharing our results with all stakeholders including participating schools and the community in order to get their views on the findings before we engage policy makers”. 

This episode features: 

Dr. Hellen Meme (co-host) - Chief Research Scientist, Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) 

Hellen Meme’s research work spans over 30 years and involves health and communities. Her research area of interest is in respiratory diseases with bias towards conducting  research in congregate communities. This necessitates a broad skill base as well as innovation in planning approaches appropriate for project implementation. In this regard, engagement of community and other stakeholders is key.  

Dr Sarah West - Centre Director and Senior Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York 

Sarah has been using citizen science approaches since she began work at SEI York in 2008, working on topics ranging from air pollution and biodiversity through to parenting and food waste. All her work uses citizen science approaches to engage a diverse range of people with research. She uses this approach because she believes that well designed projects can have huge benefits for advancing research and for making a difference for all those involved in projects. She also conducts research around the method of citizen science, looking at who is and isn’t participating in projects, and evaluating projects’ efficacy.  

Relevant links: 

https://www.sei.org/featured/citizen-science-month/ 

Fred Orina - Senior Research Scientist, Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) 

Fred’s interest is research implementation. He has 10 years’ experience in coordinating the implementation of human health research, with a focus on lung health studies in both static and nomadic communities. This involves liaising with communities and diverse stakeholders. With a scientific background, he acts as the interlink between the community, researchers, and the sponsor. 

Professor Graham Devereux - Professor of Respiratory Medicine, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

Graham is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine with research interests in the antenatal influences on the life course of airways disease and clinical trials in COPD.  He...

This episode is a two-part feature with Charles Yu who has been a TB researcher for over 30 years and Mohammed Yassin from Global Fund. In this important episode we hear how lessons from TB informed the COVID response and how COVID 19 learning is shaping the future of TB and lung health. In Part 1 our guests share: 

• The importance of public-provider partnerships in responding to lung health conditions 
• How TB experts in the Philippines were drafted in to run the covid-19 responses 
• How the global fund applied learning from TB when responding to Covid-19 

In part 2 we hear about: 

• How TB survivors filled gaps as community workers during Covid-19 
• How community engagement of the poor and vulnerable was essential to respond to Covid 19 
• The unsung Heroes and stories of people on the frontline who continued to serve the community during COVID-19 when TB facilities were closed

Dr Charles Y. Yu

Charles Y. Yu, MD, MSc, FACP, FPCP, FPCCP is an internationally recognized expert on TB particularly on public-private mix DOTS (PPMD) and has personally directly treated thousands of TB patients almost 30years of practice often without financial gain and indirectly influenced the TB practice of hundreds of other physicians through trainings, guidelines and advocacies . He has proven his leadership by being national Chairman of the Philippine Coalition against Tuberculosis (2002-2004) presiding over some of the most important years of its existence, president of the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP), and president of the Philippine College of Chest Physicians (PCCP). He was a member of the Core Group of the WHO DOTS Expansion Committee, PPMD Subgroup, WHO consultant on TB-PPMD and past President of the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development Stakeholders Association,which helped develop new TB drugs that are aimed to be affordable,accessible and is a much sought-after authority by WHO and developmental agencies as well as the Philippine Department of Health. He was member of the International Standards for TB care core group.

https://businessmirror.com.ph/2016/08/17/dr-charles-y-yu-the-dlshsi-vice-chancellor-has-found-his-rightful-place-under-the-sun/

https://www.dlshsi.edu.ph/news/dr-charles-yu-pcp-exemplar-awardee-distinguished-researcher

Dr Mohammed Yassin

Dr Mohammed Yassin (MD, MSc, PhD) is a public health physician and Infectious Diseases Epidemiologist by profession. He works at the Global Fund, Geneva as a Senior TB Advisor where he provides technical leadership on TB/MDR-TB, TB/COVID-19 and advises Global Fund teams and countries to ensure resources are prioritized for key interventions and populations and to maximize impact. He started his career as physician and district medical officer treating TB patients in Ethiopia over 25 years ago, managed the regional programme for communicable diseases. Before joining the Global Fund in 2010, he has worked in Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK and designed, implemented, and managed several multi-country projects. He promotes innovation and partnership and has worked with national programmes in several countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Western Pacific. He collaborates with technical partners globally as member of several global task forces and contributes to policy development and accelerate implementation.  

In this week's episode co-host Lucy Nyaga, together with guests Amina Baraka, a Nursing Officer in charge of Vihiga County Referral hospital and Fatuma Iman, a Reproductive Health Coordinator in Garissa County discuss their involvement in the ‘Quality Improvement (QI) of integrated HIV, TB, and malaria services in Antenatal and Postnatal care (ANC and PNC)’ programme funded by the Global Fund with funding from Takeda Pharmaceuticals. The project is supporting 61 health facilities across 3 counties to provide capacity building, mentorship and to generate evidence to inform decision-making and policymaking to support improvements of maternal, new-born and child quality of care. 

Lucy Nyaga

Country Director, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Kenya 

My name is Lucy Nyaga. I am the Country Director, Liverpool School of Tropical medicine, in Kenya. I have a background in Medical Anthropology and Public Health with extensive experience in promoting implementation of research results into policy and practice with a special focus on MNH.  With twenty years’ experience working in health programming, my experience and expertise in MNH has involved managing and implementing programmes that incorporate implementation research to inform effective programming and policy influence. Working with a range of organizations ranging from governments, academic and research institutions, UN agencies, and national & INGO, I have led and contributed to key MNH research that has led to policy influence in Eastern Africa. 

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/lucy-nyaga 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-nkirote-2062832b/ 

TWITTER HANDLES 

@Lucynnyaga 

@MOH_Kenya 

Amina Anyango Baraka

Nursing manager Vihiga County Referral Hospital

In Vihiga County Referral Hospital we offer a range of reproductive health services to the women and their families. These include antenatal care during pregnancy, intrapartum care, and postnatal care to include contraceptive use. 

Despite all these interventions, the data available still show that a large number of maternal and neonatal deaths occur during birth and 48 hours after. 

The major causes of the mortalities being hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and haemorrhage. The audits have showed that in many circumstances either there is delay in seeking the needed care or delay in the health facility to initiate the appropriate interventions. 

In this regard the provider ability to do correct diagnosis and intervene appropriately is key. Thus we regularly do training needs assessment to ascertain the provider gaps. In the community we hold dialogue days and verbal autopsies to determine the possible causes of ill health and mortalities and factors influence the uptake health services.

Fatuma Iman Maalim 

Mrs. Fatuma Iman Maalim holds a Master of Science Degree in Community Health & Development and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing. She has 35 solid years of experience working with the Ministry of Health - Kenya, 18 Years’ experience working in Maternal Newborn Health programme and 1 year in ANC/PNC programme. 

Mrs. Fatuma, is the County Reproductive Health Coordinator Garissa. She overseas and coordinates Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Adolescent Health and Gender Mainstreaming services in the entire county. She is a Master trainer, a Manager, a Mentor & a Decision maker. She is also the focal person of the World Bank’s Transforming Health Systems for Universal Care (THS-UC)...

In this week’s episode we will be discussing the intersections between research and activism for social change. With our guests Vinodkumar Rao and Joseph Kimani, we will be seeking to understand how lessons from activist approaches can be applied within research and vice versa. We will also explore how power, participation and social justice fits within the wider research agenda when seeking to engage communities in informal settings. Key points we hear from Kimani and Vinod include: 

• How slum federations in India and Kenya lead data collection with support from NGOs and researchers so they can demand rights and ensure they have a ‘seat ‘at the decision-making table  
• The role that researchers play within activist organisations to support knowledge generation, understand government policies and to decipher academic evidence so that communities can develop solutions or ask for resources from the state. 
• The organic growth of ‘movement’ building – when one community takes action another will follow and have an example to build upon 
• The importance of collecting data about slums, challenging government data, and producing evidence to ‘prove their existence, to prove their requirements and to prove the value that they bring to the city by inhabiting in the city.’ 
• How dominance and power within community structures is considered and managed within activism to promote inclusion 

Joseph Kimani

Executive Director, Shack Dwellers International-Kenya (SDI-K)

Joseph is an experienced community organizer, with a Masters in Community Economic Development. He has worked with Civil Society Organizations for the past 18 years in areas including civic and political rights, peacebuilding, economic development, and governance. Currently working as the Executive Director for Shack Dwellers International Kenya (SDI Kenya). SDI Kenya is composed of young professionals who provide technical support to Kenya Slum Dwellers Federation- Muungano wa Wanavijiji. The organization promotes and facilitates Community-based participatory research tools used by Slum federations and community organizations to use their data in the co-production of solutions with city authorities. 

1. https://pubs.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/10884IIED.pdf 
2. http://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/gdi/publications/workingpapers/scaling-participation-horn-et-al.pdf 
3. https://bulletin.ids.ac.uk/index.php/idsbo/article/view/3115 
4. https://www.muungano.net/publicationssearch 

Vinodkumar Rao works within ‘The Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers’ or SPARC, an NGO based in India working with grassroots networks of slum dwellers across cities. He has close working experience with the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) and Mahila Milan (‘women together’ in Hindi), two organisations of urban poor who negotiate for access to safe habitat and basic civic services, co-producing solutions with the state institutions. He is currently leading on the interdisciplinary action research project,

In this fifth episode of our six-part miniseries (see notes for 'useful links' to other episodes), we examine the intersection of migration, displacement, and health systems in fragile settings. With over 1 billion people on the move globally, including 84 million forcibly displaced, this episode addresses the challenges and opportunities that migration presents to health systems.

Our co-host, Dr. Joanna Raven, joins us alongside Professor Fouad Fouad and Dr. Santino Severoni, to share their experiences and insights on how health systems can respond to the needs of migrants and refugees through integration, cultural changes, and evidence-based practices.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the discussion on migration, displacement, and health systems resilience in fragile settings

01:00 Meet the Experts: Professor Fouad Mohammad Fouad and Dr. Santino Severoni

02:56 Global Migration and Displacement: Setting the Scene

07:56 Challenges Faced by Health Systems

09:13 Integration and Parallel Health Systems

13:11 WHO's Role and Strategic Approaches

17:11 Examples of Good Practices from Different Countries

21:48 Final Thoughts and Advice for Future Work

24:12 Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser

In this episode:

Dr Joanna Raven - Reader in health systems, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Jo has worked in global health for more than 25 years, focusing on strengthening health systems. Jo is a researcher with a passion for co-designing and implementing health system research with local stakeholders including community members, health workers, health managers and decision makers. As a health worker herself, Jo’s work focuses on supporting the health workforce to deliver people-centred care that is of good quality and leaves no one behind.

Dr. Fouad Fouad - Professor of Global Health and Social Sciences, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Fouad has extensive research on migration and health, focusing on multidisciplinary approaches to forced displacement, health systems in humanitarian settings, and the political economy of health in protracted crises. Fouad is also the IDRC Chair of the Forced Displacement Program in the Middle East and the Co-Director of the Refugee Health Program at the Global Health Institute. His role as a member of several technical working groups, including the WHO Global Consultation on the Health of Migrants and Refugees and the Global Research Agenda on Health and Migration, underscores his expertise and influence in the field. Fouad served as a commissioner in the UCL-Lancet Commission on Migration and Health (2018) and is currently a commissioner in the Lancet Commission on Health, Conflict, and Forced Migration.

Dr. Santino Severoni - Director of the WHO Department of Health and Migration, World Health Organization

Dr. Severoni is the Director of the Department of Health and Migration at WHO headquarters in Geneva. With over 24 years of experience, he has held senior roles at the WHO Regional Office for Europe and worked globally in health sector reforms, system strengthening, and complex emergency management. His career includes serving as WHO Representative in Albania and Tajikistan. Since 2011, he has focused on public health aspects of migration, leading efforts to implement global migration and refugee compacts and coordinating WHO’s first World Report on the Health of Refugees and Migrants.

Useful links

• WHO global action plan on promoting the health of refugees and migrants, 2019–2030
• Promoting the health of refugees and migrants: experiences from around the world - Compendium referenced by Dr. Santino

Featuring guest speakers Lee Ching Ng from the Environmental Health Institute in Singapore and Lina Finda from Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, this episode explores how communities perceive and respond to control approaches which involve modified mosquitoes. We discuss: 

• Parallels and contrasts between Project Wolbachia in Singapore, a successful dengue control program, and exploratory research into perceptions of GM technologies in Tanzania for controlling malaria  
• The importance of engaging with community concerns and being responsive to them, and of making information around these approaches inclusive, clear, and accessible  
• Combining modified mosquito approaches with existing vector control tools (e.g., LLINs, IRS, source reduction) and how this has the potential to create public confusion 

Dr Ng Lee Ching

Group Director, Environmental Health Institute National Environment Agency 

Assoc Prof Ng Lee Ching is the Group Director of Environmental Health Institute (EHI), a national environmental health facility at the National Environment Agency in Singapore. She has spent more than 20 years building scientific capabilities for Singapore’s environmental public health, conducting research to understand disease risk and transmission, and developing tools and strategies for mitigation of risks.  

She has co-authored around 200 scientific papers and book chapters, in the area of vector borne diseases, COVID-19, food borne diseases, anti-microbial resistance, indoor air quality etc.  

She serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. She is a regular temporary advisor to the WHO and the IAEA, and serves as the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research of Arbovirus and their Associated Vectors, in Singapore. 

https://www.nea.gov.sg/corporate-functions/resources/research/environmental-health-institute  

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34831751/  

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.16.21257922v1  

https://www.nea.gov.sg/corporate-functions/resources/research/ehi-journal-publications

Dr. Lina Finda

Research Scientist, Ifakara Health Institute

I am a research scientist at Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, and a postodoctoral fellow at University of California – San Diego. At Ifakara I have been working on a number of projects to investigate the magnitude and drivers of malaria transmission, to understand the interactions between malaria vectors and humans and to develop alternative tools for malaria control.  

I received my BSc in Biochemistry from Western Washington University (WA, USA) in 2010, in 2014 received a Masters of Public Health with dual concentrations in Maternal and Child Health and Health Education and Promotion, from Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine (LA, USA, and in September 2021 I completed my PhD from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. My PhD research, based in Tanzania, focused on developing and testing effective stakeholder engagement models for novel technologies for malaria control. I am currently doing a postdoctoral fellowship at...

In this episode we celebrate International Women’s Day by revealing the hidden gender inequities that lead to gender-based violence and more importantly what can be done to instigate change.

It is the first of two episodes celebrating International Women’s Day and features a Kenyan community based participatory research project by Beate Ringwald (PhD student) from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine who worked in partnership with LVCT Health (including our guests) and 11 community co-researchers from Gitathuru village in Korogocho. The study aimed to strengthen community capacity to prevent intimate partner violence and HIV.

Veronica Mwania and Maria Muthoki take us through a participatory research journey, discussing the ways that they engaged co-researchers whilst considering and addressing power structures of inequity. They talk about how knowledge was generated through creativity, dialogue and awareness raising which was embedded and transferred to communities through drama, word of mouth and art.

More about our guests:

Maria Muthoki – Researcher, Kemri, LVCT, Infinite Insight (among others)

Maria Muthoki is a freelance researcher based in Nairobi, Kenya and has 14 of years of professional research experience. She has done both social and market research, involving mainly qualitative and sometimes quantitative methods. Maria Muthoki worked with LVCT Health, as part of the Accountability for Informal Urban Equity Hub (ARISE), to support this community-based participatory PhD study on the intersections of HIV and intimate partner violence in an informal settlement in Nairobi. She worked with a diverse group of community co-researchers from an informal settlement. While her main role was documentation and management of data, she also supported co-researchers to analyse data and disseminate findings. Maria loves talking to people and understanding their viewpoint on the studies that she conducts.

Veronicah Mwania - Independent Researcher, Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)

Veronica Mwania has a background in applied psychology and has been an independent researcher for 17 years in Kenya. She has worked for LVCT Health on various research studies, including the participatory study that we will be hearing about in this episode. She is currently working with the Kenya Medical Research Institute on a study involving mental health screening for adolescents who are living with HIV.

Veronica’s work in this project blended intersectionality and participatory research approaches working with a diverse group of community co-researchers who were equal partners in the research process. Intersectionality links theory and action – the formation of theory through practice by marginalised groups and the use of knowledge to challenge inequalities in everyday life. By applying a participatory health research approach, the team sought to mitigate the risk of their research being a closed space, reproducing unequal power structures, and being irrelevant. In line with participatory and intersectionality research guidelines, they paid attention to power, time, space, and diversity of knowledge; and promoted reflexivity, equity, and opportunities for collective action.

Useful links:

• A research journey that brought power theories to life: Lessons from Korogocho, Kenya | ARISE [Blog]

• The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on community-based participatory research: Reflections from a study in an...

Join us as we focus on how capacity strengthening in healthcare can transform maternal and newborn care outcomes, in the second episode of our three-part miniseries, "Transforming Maternal and Newborn Health". The discussion highlights the critical role of health workers, from nurses to doctors, and the importance of building skills, teamwork, and communication to improve early diagnosis and reduce complications.

Experts share insights on training approaches, challenges faced, and the transformative impact of mentorship and continuous professional development in Kenya, Tanzania, and beyond. This episode offers valuable lessons for health systems strengthening and sets the stage for our next conversation on sustainability.

Chapter List:

00:00:00 – Introduction to Capacity Strengthening

00:01:11 – Role of Health Workers in Maternal and Newborn Care

00:02:19 – Challenges in Achieving High-Quality Care

00:04:52 – Impact of Continuous Professional Development

00:05:51 – Real-Life Improvements in Diagnosis and Care

00:09:28 – Competency-Based Training Approaches

00:12:20 – Shifting Attitudes and Respectful Maternity Care

00:14:01 – Research Integration and Policy Influence

00:16:13 – Key Advice for Capacity Strengthening

00:20:06 – Conclusion and What’s Next

In this episode:

Dr. Rael Mutai, Regional Technical Advisor (MNH), Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Tropical

Rael is a public health specialist with over 21 years’ of experience in health and development. She is passionate about health systems strengthening, Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights and Quality Maternal and Newborn Health. Rael has been involved with the programme in the last 3 years, as the Regional Technical Adviser for Kenya and Tanzania. The Programme uses global evidence customised to country context for improved maternal and newborn outcomes. The programme has addressed gaps in ANC-PNC service delivery through capacity building of healthcare workers and integrated approaches to care.

Dr. Leonard Katalambula – Lecturer, University of Dodoma

Dr. Katalambula is the Head of the Department of Public Health at the University of Dodoma (UDOM), where he has worked for over 15 years. He also serves as Board Chairperson for Action Against Hunger (Tanzania) and is a technical committee member of TWG 6, focusing on reproductive, maternal, child, and adolescent health. An experienced researcher with publications in implementation science and public health, Dr. Katalambula leads projects on Quality Improvement of Integrated HIV, TB, and Malaria Services during antenatal and postnatal care, as well as the MEGA project. For the past 15 years, he has worked closely with communities, addressing challenges through research and community services.

Sylvia Kimtai – Midwife, Uasin Gishu County

Sylvia is currently attached to the county reproductive health office coordinating the elimination of maternal-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis B and also quality improvement. She has been involved in ANC/PNC and quality improvement training supporting Kenya and Tanzania in both face-to-face and blended learning

Sylvia mentors nurses, midwives, and clinical officers on quality improvement in ANC/PNC in Uasin Gishu County, also supporting sub-county reproductive health coordinators in the mentorship of service providers on ANC/PNC. Passionate about quality improvement, she has a WhatsApp platform where facility quality improvement chairpersons share best practices and challenges.

Useful links:

• A Collaborative Approach to Improving Maternal and Newborn Health in Tanzania or Saving Lives
• Improving antenatal and...

Our guests Charles Mbogo from KEMRI and Hmooda Toto Kafy from the Federal Ministry of Health, Khartoum discuss integrated vector management (IVM) and the role that communities play in this approach to vector control. Highlights from the discussion include: 

• Insights into how IVM strategies have been implemented to in Sudan and Kenya to control a variety of diseases including malaria, dengue and lymphatic filariasis 
• The role of intersectoral collaboration between sectors including health, agriculture, environment, education, and community groups 
• How sustainability can be achieved when community empowerment and capacity building are prioritized, and adequate technical and logistical support is provided 

Dr. Hmooda Toto Kafy, MSc, PhD 

Vector Control consultant/ Advisor, Federal Ministry of Health, Khartoum - Sudan

Medical entomologist and Vector control specialist with a BSc in Public and Environmental Health from University of Khartoum 1999, MSc in Biology and Control of Disease Vectors from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine United Kingdom 2008 and a PhD in Medical Entomology from university Sains Malaysia 2019 by research titled: Impact of Insecticide Resistance in Anopheles arabiensis on effectiveness of malaria vector control in Sudan. since 2020, 2013 – 2019 headed integrated vector management department, FMoH, 2009 - 2015  Project officer of trial titled (Impact of Insecticide Resistance in   Anopheles arabiensis on effectiveness of malaria vector control in Sudan supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).  2009 – 2012 Head of Integrated Vector Management Unit and Deputy Manager of  National Malaria Control Programme FMoH, 2004 – 2007 head of Integrated Vector Management Unit- NMCP FMOH, 2001 – 2003 head of Vector Control Unit – NMCP FMOH and 1999 – 2001 Field supervisors, Malaria Control Programme, SMoH –Khartoum state. Since 20th May 2020 Hmooda is a Technical Support Senior Specialist; Country & Regional Support Partner Committee (CRSPC)-RBM Partnership to End Malaria, Home based with significant travel duties. Hmooda during 2000 – 2017 participated in many consultation works with WHO – EMRO and WHO – HQ such as development of vector control guidelines. Hmooda Toto Kafy published 18 papers in the subject of medical entomology and vector control in peer review journals. 

Prof Charles Mbogo

Chief Research Scientist, Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)

I am a Chief Research Scientist and a public health entomologist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute. I have an interest in developing and strengthening research capacity and scientific leadership in Africa and have supervised over 20 research fellows and doctoral students.  I am currently the President of Pan African Mosquito Control Association (PAMCA) where I am involved in supporting the development of a new platform for the capacity building of African entomologists. My research interests include the ecology and behaviour, and transmission dynamics of mosquitoes and other disease vectors, and development of new vector control tools. I have worked on the large-scale evaluation of insecticide-treated bednets, insecticide resistance, and integrated vector management (IVM) strategies especially community-based vector control approaches. 

1. www.kemri-wellcome.org 
2. www.kemri.org 
3. www.pamca.org 

This week’s episode features Philip Ode, a Programme Officer/Mental Health Focal Point from CBM Global Disability Inclusion, Nigeria and Tarry Asoka, a consultant in health and development. Together with co-host Tosin Adekeye, they discuss the development and delivery of an essential care package for integration of mental health and Neglected Tropical Diseases, including how communities and people affected have been involved. 

Dr. Oluwatosin Adekeye

Assistant Director of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry Ahmadu Bello University Hospital Zaria Kaduna

A social scientist with varied experience in both clinical and research aspects of health among communities in Northern Nigeria. As a Clinical Psychologist, his work has been both on mental and behavioral disorders and the effects of chronic disease on the well-being of patients and caregivers. As a Social Scientist, he just concluded a study that documented the well-being of people with stigmatizing skin diseases and established a care and support group within the community. More recently he is working on developing a well-being tool for parents and children with disability. 

Twitter: @TosinOluw, @Sightsavers

Tarry Asoka

Consultant in Health & Development , Independent Consultant 

Tarry Asoka is a Medical Doctor with advanced training and qualifications in Health, Population and Nutrition, as well as Social Science Research. Besides providing technical assistance in number of health and health related areas, he is passionate about testing and implementing ‘models of care’ - service delivery reforms that re-organise health service around people’s needs and expectations. In particular, Tarry has a keen interest in organisational innovations within the health system that demonstrate competency in managing and delivering care for specific groups (such as persons with chronic health conditions) or whole population characterised by a combination of four essential elements: providing the right service, in the right setting, by the right person, using the right processes.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarry-asoka-401008175/  

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/race-onhow-community-health-being-integrated-primary-care-tarry-asoka/?trackingId=6M%2FpXWSKQi6b6hP1OM7uQw%3D%3D  

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/re-imagining-community-health-global-south-tarry-asoka/ 

Asoka, T. (2016a) Imagining a new future for healthcare services in Nigeria. Africa Health (Nigeria Edition). 38 (3): 6 - 8 http://africa-health.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AH-Nigeria.pdf 

Asoka, T. (2016b) Feasibility of Managed Clinical Networks in Nigeria: a case of policy transfer to less advanced settings. [Doctoral thesis] Keele: Keele University http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/2368/1/AsokaDBA2016.pdf 

Philip Ode

Programme Officer/Mental Health Focal Point, CBM Global Disability Inclusion, Nigeria 

Philip is an experienced social development worker, specialising in projects/programmes management focused on inclusive community development and the public health concerns of marginalized and...

In this episode, we examine the critical role of health systems financing, especially in fragile and conflict-affected settings. Our expert guests discuss how different governance challenges, external actors, and political landscapes shape health financing. We explore strategies to make efficient use of resources and ensure essential services for vulnerable populations. (See ‘useful links’ for links to the other 5 episodes from the series).

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction to the Podcast and Today’s Topic

01:00 – What is Health Systems Financing?

02:56 – Challenges of Health Financing in Crisis Situations

05:17 – The Role of External Actors in Health Financing

07:34 – The Complexity of Parallel Health Systems

09:30 – Financing for Long-Term Recovery

13:22 – Health Financing Innovations and Examples from the Field

17:26 – Advice for Improving Health Financing in Crisis Settings

20:34 – Final Thoughts and Next Episode Teaser

In this episode:

Dr. Maria Bertone – Reader, Institute for Global Health and Development, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

A health systems specialist with extensive experience in health financing, governance, and service delivery in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

Dr. Awad Mataria - Director, UHC/Health Systems, WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean

Since his early life – born in a refugee camp and spending childhood under occupation – and throughout his professional career, Dr. Mataria developed a special interest in working in fragile and conflict-affected settings. He is an expert in health economics, focusing on conflict-affected settings and global health system reforms.

Dr. Ibrahim Bou Orm – Lecturer, Institute for Global Health and Development, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh

A leading expert in health systems and financing, with deep knowledge in governance and health system recovery in conflict-affected regions, particularly in the Middle East.

Useful Links

• Non-state and informal actors in fragile settings - Connecting Citizens to Science - In this episode, we explore the critical role of non-state actors and informal providers in health systems within fragile settings. Our guests share insights on their legitimacy, roles during emergencies, and the challenges they face. This is the fourth episode in the six-part miniseries "Stories of Resilience: Local Lives and Health Systems," brought to you by ReBUILD for Resilience.
• Migration, displacement and health systems - Connecting Citizens to Science - In this fifth episode of our six-part miniseries, we examine the intersection of migration, displacement, and health systems in fragile settings. With over 1 billion people on the move globally, including 84 million forcibly displaced, this episode addresses the challenges and opportunities that migration presents to health systems. Our co-host, Dr. Joanna Raven, joins us alongside Professor Fouad Fouad and Dr. Santino Severoni, to share their experiences and insights on how health systems can respond to the needs of migrants and refugees through integration, cultural changes, and evidence-based practices.
• The Health Workforce in Times of Crisis - Connecting Citizens to Science - This episode is the third part of the six-part mini-series "Stories of Resilience: Local Lives and Health Systems," brought to you by ReBUILD for Resilience. In this episode, we discuss the challenges faced by the health workforce in fragile settings such as conflict zones and areas hit by political and economic crises. Our guests share their first-hand experiences and insights on how health systems and workers strive to provide care under extreme...

In this celebratory episode to close out 2022, we have brought together previous co-hosts and guests to reflect on what we have learned over the past year. We examine our learning along the translational research pathway. 

The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine have a translational research trajectory; that means there is a continuum of science from basic research and labs to embedding change for communities and within sustainable policies and practices. LSTM works with a range of partners globally along this continuum, and in this episode, we will be hearing from some of those that have worked with LSTM and have different positions within programmes and PhDs. Our multidisciplinary guests share their understanding of community engagement and how they ensure that community voice is included in research design, analysis and outcomes throughout the research pathway.

This episode features: 

Beatrice Egid – MRC PhD Student, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

In 2017, Beatrice completed a BA in Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford. She began an MSc in Tropical Disease Biology at LSTM in September 2018, during which she undertook a research project determining the level of insecticide resistance in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Accra, Ghana, and the metabolic mechanisms driving it. Beatrice started the MRC Doctoral Training Programme at LSTM, with an integrated MRes at Lancaster University in Global Health: Quantitative and Translational Skills, in 2019.

Beatrice is undertaking her PhD as part of the ARISE project. Within ARISE, Beatrice's project focuses on vector-borne diseases in waste-picking communities in Vijayawada, India. She will be employing a mixed-methods approach, combining aspects of entomology and policy analysis alongside qualitative and participatory methods.

Beatrice has a strong interest in health policy and co-production research approaches. She conducted a desk-based policy project exploring the intersection between vector-borne diseases and city resilience in the context of the Resilient Cities Network (RCN), and has published two papers from her MRes qualitative research project investigating power dynamics in participatory research.

Dr. Oluwatosin Adekeye - Assistant Director of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry Ahmadu Bello University Hospital Zaria Kaduna

A social scientist with varied experience in both clinical and research aspects of health among communities in Northern Nigeria. As a Clinical Psychologist, his work has been both on mental and behavioural disorders and the effects of chronic disease on the well-being of patients and caregivers. As a Social Scientist, he just concluded a study that documented the well-being of people with stigmatizing skin diseases and established a care and support group within the community. More recently he is working on developing a well-being tool for parents and children with disability. 

Dr Akinola Oluwole – Consultant, Sightsavers, Nigeria

Dr Akinola Oluwole is an experienced researcher with a special interest in socio-epidemiology of tropical infectious diseases. His multidisciplinary expertise includes spatial disease mapping, monitoring and evaluation of intervention and control programmes and implementation/Health systems research for public health and disease control. He has over Fifteen years’ experience working on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). Recently, Dr Akinola was the programme lead for two Co-production research projects within the COUNTDOWN consortia, one to develop a care package for Female Genital Schistosomiasis and a second to improve the equity of mass drug administration in Nigeria. Both projects utilised...

In this episode of Connecting Citizens to Science, we conclude our three-part miniseries on improving maternal and newborn healthcare. Host Dr. Kim Ozano and her guests explore how to sustain quality improvements in health systems and progress toward maternal and newborn Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Dr. Rael Mutai, Regional Technical Advisor for Maternal and Newborn Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Kenya, and Dr. Nicholas Furtado, Senior Medical Advisor at Global Fund, share their insights on the successes and challenges of embedding sustainable practices in maternal and newborn healthcare systems across Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria. (see 'useful links' for the other episodes from the series).

Chapter List:

00:00:00 – Introduction to Sustainability and SDG Goals

00:01:52 – Progress Towards Maternal and Newborn Health indicators

00:04:50 – Global Landscape: The Impact of the Pandemic

00:06:37 – Addressing Inequities within Countries

00:09:26 – Healthcare Workers and Sustainable Outcomes

00:12:22 – Intersectionality and Broader Determinants of Maternal Health

00:17:38 – Advice and Call to Action for Sustainable Solutions

In this episode:

Dr. Rael Mutai - Regional Technical Advisor (MNH), Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Tropical Kenya

Rael is a public health specialist with over 21 years’ of experience in health and development. She is passionate about health systems strengthening, Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights and Quality Maternal and Newborn Health. Rael has been involved with the quality improvement programme in the last 3 years, as the Regional Technical Adviser for Kenya and Tanzania. The Programme uses global evidence customised to country context for improved maternal and newborn outcomes. The programme has addressed gaps in ANC-PNC service delivery through capacity building of healthcare workers and integrated approaches to care.

Dr. Nicolas Furtado - Senior Medical Advisor, Global Fund

Nicolas is a Senior Medical Advisor with the Health System Strengthening Technical Advice and Partnerships team at the Global Fund. He is deeply engaged in efforts to strengthen primary healthcare systems globally, particularly focusing on improving maternal and newborn health outcomes and now focusing on improving access to medical oxygen and respiratory care. Throughout his work, Nicolas has been instrumental in addressing key challenges such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare inequities, and the need for sustainable, locally adapted solutions. He advocates for simple, effective, and culturally appropriate interventions to ensure quality care at the point of service delivery.

Useful links:

• Strengthening the Health Workforce for Maternal and Newborn Care - Connecting Citizens to Science - In the second episode of our three-part miniseries, " Transforming Maternal and Newborn Health", we focus on how capacity strengthening in healthcare can transform maternal and newborn care outcomes. The discussion highlights the critical role of health workers, from nurses to doctors, and the importance of building skills, teamwork, and communication to improve early diagnosis and reduce complications. Experts share insights on training approaches, challenges faced, and the transformative impact of mentorship and continuous professional development in Kenya, Tanzania, and beyond. This episode offers valuable lessons for health systems strengthening and sets the stage for our next conversation on sustainability.
• Quality Innovations in Maternal and Newborn Health - Connecting Citizens to Science - In this first episode of our three-part miniseries, "Transforming Maternal and Newborn Health," we dive into a groundbreaking...

In this episode, we are going to celebrate World Malaria Day with our co-host and guests. This year's theme is Time to Deliver Zero Malaria, and it is focused on investing, innovating, and implementing tools that are available today and innovating for future tools.

WHO calls to action include prioritising funding for the most marginalised and hard to reach populations who are less able to access services and are the hardest hit when it comes to becoming ill from malaria. To help us understand more, we have co-host, Dr. Hellen Barsosio, who is a medical Kenyan doctor who has been investigating risk factors, tools, and interventions to prevent adverse birth outcomes, and more recently research on preventing malaria in pregnancy. She is in her final year of her PhD at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine under the Department of Clinical Science, where her PhD focuses on new drugs to prevent malaria in pregnancy.

The WHO also calls for stepping up innovation for new vector control approaches, so we have two guests with us today to help us to understand what those are.

We will be speaking to reader and Wolfson Fellow, Dr. Grant Hughes, and reader, Dr. Tony Nolan from the Vector Biology and Tropical Disease Biology Department at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Tony has led the development of genetic tools to better understand the biology of mosquitoes that transmit malaria, and this has led to the development of genetic approaches to control mosquito populations. This is to decrease the amount of malaria transmission. Tony is also using some of these tools to understand how insecticides work, and in particular, how mosquitoes can evolve resistance to insecticides.

Grant is currently focusing on novel control strategies for arboviruses and malaria, and his overarching goal is to develop approaches which will either reduce mosquito numbers, or stop these mosquitoes transmitting the pathogens that make people ill.

This episode features:

Dr Hellen Barsosio - Clinical Research Scientist and section Head Maternal and New-born Health Studies, Malaria Program, KEMRI-CGHR

Over the past 11 years, Hellen has been investigating risk factors, tools and interventions to prevent adverse birth outcomes, and more recently research on preventing malaria in pregnancy as one of the causes of adverse birth outcomes in malaria endemic areas. She trained in Kenya as a medical doctor, and did her post-graduate studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University of Oxford. She is in the final year of her PhD at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine under the department of Clinical Science where her PhD work focuses on new drugs to prevent malaria in pregnancy.

Dr Tony Nolan - Reader in Insect Genetics and Research Group Leader, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Tony has led the development of genetic tools to better understand the biology of mosquitoes that transmit malaria. This has led to the development of genetic approaches to control mosquito populations, in order to decrease the amount of malaria transmission. Tony is also using some of these genetic tools to understand how insecticides work and, in particular, how mosquitoes can evolve resistance to insecticides.

Dr Grant Hughes - Reader and Royal Society Wolfson Fellow, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Grant has been investigating the use of microbes to control mosquito-borne diseases for over 15 years. After undertaking a PhD at the University of Queensland in Australia looking at microbial control of crop pests, Grant moved to the US to complete a post-doctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to examine how a bacteria called Wolbachia infected mosquitoes and interacted with Plasmodium parasites, the parasites that cause Malaria. After further work at Penn State University, working on...

This episode is a two-part feature with Charles Yu who has been a TB researcher for over 30 years and Mohammed Yassin from Global Fund. In this important episode we hear how lessons from TB informed the COVID response and how COVID 19 learning is shaping the future of TB and lung health. In Part 1 our guests share: 

• The importance of public-provider partnerships in responding to lung health conditions 
• How TB experts in the Philippines were drafted in to run the covid-19 responses 
• How the global fund applied learning from TB when responding to Covid-19 

In part 2 we hear about: 

• How TB survivors filled gaps as community workers during Covid-19 
• How community engagement of the poor and vulnerable was essential to respond to Covid 19 
• The unsung Heroes and stories of people on the frontline who continued to serve the community during COVID-19 when TB facilities were closed

Dr Charles Y. Yu

Charles Y. Yu, MD, MSc, FACP, FPCP, FPCCP is an internationally recognized expert on TB particularly on public-private mix DOTS (PPMD) and has personally directly treated thousands of TB patients almost 30years of practice often without financial gain and indirectly influenced the TB practice of hundreds of other physicians through trainings, guidelines and advocacies . He has proven his leadership by being national Chairman of the Philippine Coalition against Tuberculosis (2002-2004) presiding over some of the most important years of its existence, president of the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP), and president of the Philippine College of Chest Physicians (PCCP). He was a member of the Core Group of the WHO DOTS Expansion Committee, PPMD Subgroup, WHO consultant on TB-PPMD and past President of the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development Stakeholders Association,which helped develop new TB drugs that are aimed to be affordable,accessible and is a much sought-after authority by WHO and developmental agencies as well as the Philippine Department of Health. He was member of the International Standards for TB care core group.

https://businessmirror.com.ph/2016/08/17/dr-charles-y-yu-the-dlshsi-vice-chancellor-has-found-his-rightful-place-under-the-sun/

https://www.dlshsi.edu.ph/news/dr-charles-yu-pcp-exemplar-awardee-distinguished-researcher

Dr Mohammed Yassin

Dr Mohammed Yassin (MD, MSc, PhD) is a public health physician and Infectious Diseases Epidemiologist by profession. He works at the Global Fund, Geneva as a Senior TB Advisor where he provides technical leadership on TB/MDR-TB, TB/COVID-19 and advises Global Fund teams and countries to ensure resources are prioritized for key interventions and populations and to maximize impact. He started his career as physician and district medical officer treating TB patients in Ethiopia over 25 years ago, managed the regional programme for communicable diseases. Before joining the Global Fund in 2010, he has worked in Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK and designed, implemented, and managed several multi-country projects. He promotes innovation and partnership and has worked with national programmes in several countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Western Pacific. He collaborates with technical partners globally as member of several global task forces and contributes to policy development and accelerate implementation.  

In this week’s episode we hear from Dr Ana Bonell and Dr. Aliyu Nuhu Ahmed from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine about environmental degradations from climate change that impact health in The Gambia. The expected increase in heat and reduced rainfall in The Gambia is one of the most significant health threats caused by climate change. However, little is known about the gendered dynamics of exposure and response to heat stress; changes in land use and transmission of zoonotic diseases and children’s ideas for the future. Our guests discuss how they are engaging communities in identifying solutions to climate change impacts on health and hear about: 

• changes in agricultural land use due to climate change and how these impact health outcomes in rural communities, including transmission of zoonotic diseases  
• a project with pregnant farmers in The Gambia to understand how they perceive and act upon occupational heat stress  
• a “Climate Change Solutions Festival” with children in 50 schools who gave a unique insight into perceived climate change problems and scalable, affordable and creative solutions that could be implemented in their local area 
•  co-production approaches and how they are situated within the wider decolonising health agenda 

Dr Ana Bonell, Clinical Research Fellow 

Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Dr. Ana Bonell is a Wellcome funded Clinical Research Fellow working on maternal health and climate change. She has training in epidemiology, tropical medicine and advanced physiology. She is particularly interested in the nexus between climate change, maternal health, occupational heat stress and agriculture. Her research focuses on pregnant subsistence farmers in West Africa and the impact of maternal exposure to high ambient temperature, the physiological response to that stress and the impact that has on fetal health and wellbeing. Additionally she is interested in connecting with, learning with and from the youth on climate problems and solutions to the current crisis.   

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.785254/full 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.784915/full 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.31.22273092v1 

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3965382 

Dr. Aliyu Nuhu Ahmed, PhD Student 

Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Rapid changes are occurring in agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Land-use changes, market dynamics, agricultural policy, environmental factors, cultural habits, and technology are all influencing and affecting crop farming techniques and animal husbandry for both commercial and subsistence purposes. However, the effects of these changes on zoonotic disease risk remain largely unknown, particularly in the world's poorest communities, where there is rising recognition that zoonotic illnesses have a significant impact on health and livelihoods. A better understanding of the mechanism by which environmental degradation endangers human health, especially in rural communities, will inform ways to optimise zoonotic disease risk mitigation and promote sustainable land-use that is more environmentally friendly. 

We're really excited to be entering a new phase of the podcast series where we will be celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

To do this, we will be hosting conversations about the ways in which the Global South and the Global North have learned from each other and the valuable collaborations that have shaped global health policies and practices and continue to influence them. These conversations, will of course, have a specific focus on engaging with communities and people.

This episode examines how The Liverpool Vaccine Equity project applied lessons learned from the Global South, specifically Kenya, to reduce vaccine hesitancy in Merseyside and how the methods have created a legacy that is improving uptake of other health services.

The episodes guests:

Amina Ismail

Community Mobiliser, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Amina is a Community Mobiliser at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine working on the Liverpool Vaccine Equity Project. She is a qualified Primary teacher and understands the positive impact of supporting communities to address inequality.

Amina has over 25 years’ experience in the UK and Saudi Arabia working with communities across both the education and health sector. She has supported multidisciplinary Community Innovation Teams (CITs) working in deprived areas of Liverpool to identify reasons for vaccine hesitancy.

Amina has provided coaching and support to the Community Innovation Teams. She is committed to working with the CITs and engaging with different stakeholders to improve collaborative working reflective of a community-led approach to achieve vaccine equity.  

 Relevant links:

About The Liverpool Vaccine Equity project

Project

Approach (video)

I did if for……photo exhibition

22 Vaccination Stories

Zakirya Hassan

Community Champion, Merseyside Somali and Community Association and Kaalmo Youth Development

The aim of Zak's role is to reduce health inequalities and increase health equity and support his community. At Kaalmo Youth Development, Zak supports young people working as a sessional youth worker arranging trips, group activities and after school classes.

He supports a community drop-in service held in the Merseyside Somali and Community Association helping people with benefits services, debt advice, support with translation and school admissions.

Zak also runs his own organisation on the side Granby Toxteth Athletic a mental health sports organisation tackling mental health through physical activity they have as a walking club a football team and a basketball team.

Relevant Links:

Granby Toxteth Athletic Project

Mandela Oguche

Project Officer, Continuous Quality Improvement, LVCT Health

Mandela serves as Project Officer for continuous quality improvement at LVCT Health Organisation based in Kenya, Kisii County. He has previously worked on mixed methods research projects around quality of care in...

In this episode we are talking about the FEPOW Research Group. FEPOW stands for Far East Prisoners of War, and it focuses on capturing the history of civilian captives during the second World War and the impact that this has had on subsequent generations.

The group brings together veterans, their families, writers, and academics to create a friendly space to capture stories that we can learn from and apply to research now.

Approximately 240,000 Allied servicemen had become prisoners of war of the Japanese by early 1942. Over 50,000 British were captured during the fighting in Hong Kong, Malaya, at the fall of Singapore and across the former Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). The 415-kilometre Thailand-Burma railway was built by Far East prisoners of war (FEPOW) who were part of a huge slave labour force drafted from across the region. The railway provided the Japanese with a vital supply route for their fighting forces in Burma. It was forged through raw jungle, across mountain passes and was completed in a little over 15 months in October 1943. Of the 30,000 British FEPOW sent to camps in Thailand and Burma over 6,600 died.

For this episode, we welcome a new co-host, Geoff Gill from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where he has been involved with research and clinical care of former Far East prisoners of war.

He has led the medical history inquiries into Far East imprisonment, resulting in two recent books, Captive Memories, and Burma Railway Medicine. We also have two great guests, Brian Spittle and James Reynolds.

Geoff explains to us “I think one of the things I've learnt over the years, is that there are many different ways of telling a story and there's no one right way there, there are many different ways.” and in direct reference to the stories shared directly from the FEPOWs and their archives “It's a story worth learning from, and I think we have receptive generations to tell it to.”

This episode features:

Prof. Geoff Gill – Professor of International Medicine, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

Geoff Gill is Professor of International Medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and the University of Liverpool, and a retired NHS Consultant Physician. At LSTM he has been involved in the medical care of ex-Far East Prisoners of War (POWs), as well as extensive clinical research into their ongoing health problems – notably persisting malaria and amoebic dysentery, chronic worm infestations, hepatitis B infection, long-term effects of vitamin deficiency, and the extensive psychological aftermath. He has published extensively on these and other POW-related health issues. More recent research has involved the medical history of the Far East POW experience, in particular on the Thai-Burma Railway. This resulted in a PhD degree in 2009, and the book Burma Railway Medicine (with Meg Parkes) published in 2017. The LSTM Far East POW Project has been in operation in different forms since late 1945, and is the longest collaboration in the School’s history.

Brian Spittle

Brian grew up in the UK and in his mid-twenties moved to the United States to pursue postgraduate studies. He has lived in Chicago for the past forty years, retiring from a career in higher education administration six years ago. His father, Jack Spittle, was in the RAMC during the Second World War, arriving in Singapore at the end of November 1941. He worked in the dysentery wing at Roberts Hospital at Changi, and followed the hospital moves to Selarang and Kranji. A keen ornithologist, he made detailed observations of the birds at Changi, publishing them after the war in the Bulletin of the Raffles Museum. It was only after his father died in 2004 that Brian found the notebooks he had made in captivity. Brian is close to completing a memoir about his own journey to understand more of Jack Spittle’s time as a POW and...

Our team of podcasters are roaming the halls of HSR2022 to bring you the thoughts and takeways of the presenters and delegates after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement. 

In today’s special episode we have: 

Dr. Lathadevi Chilgod – Public Health Researcher , Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, India 

Germań Alaracoń – Research Assistant, University College London & Universidad de los Andes 

Meena Putturaj – PhD Scholar, Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, India 

Daniela DaCosta – Epidemiologist, the Unit of Medical Anthropology    

More conference coverage coming your way throughout the week! 

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast connect discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change linked to health. 

In this week’s episode we hear from Nafisa Musa Isa, Deputy Director Family & Community Health, Kaduna State, Nigeria, and Dr. Olubunmi Akinboye, Director Public Health, Oyo State Ministry of Health, Nigeria. Together with co-host Lucy Nyaga, we discuss the community structures that are being considered within the Global Funded ‘Quality Improvement (QI) of integrated HIV, TB, and malaria services in Antenatal and Postnatal care (ANC and PNC)’ programme. We learn about the importance of including community members on Quality Improvement Teams, the mechanisms that have been used by the programme to drastically improve uptake of antenatal and postnatal services through integration, mentorship and training and the value of considering culture and needs in implementation research.  

Dr. Olubunmi Olufunmilola Ayinde

Director Public Health, Ministry of Health, Ibadan, Oyo State 

I am Dr. Olubunmi Ayinde a Public Health Physician and presently the Director Public Health at the Oyo State Ministry of Health. Over the past few years, I have worked in providing evidence-based, people-oriented, broad-based, purposeful, sustainable health care service delivery to strengthen Health Systems and ensure resilience; As well as leading cross-functional teams to consistently meet key program deliverables, while delivering efficient, affordable, accessible, effective and equitable services to the people across different communities. I coordinated the state HIV/AIDS program for over 12 years. I also had the opportunity to oversee malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and Reproductive Health activities which includes cervical cancer prevention (by screening for early detection across communities), ensuring testing for HIV, Syphilis and Hepatitis in Antenatal care services. I presently lead the implementation of quality improvement with integration of HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria at the state level which was initially achieved by collaboration with AFENET, but is presently being achieved by collaboration with LSTM. I am also the coordination Pillar lead for COVID-19 in the State.  

I successfully administered different HIV surveys as well as Insecticide Treated Net (ITN) distribution across all communities in the State. Community participation and engagement of key community stakeholders was a major part of the process to ensure full participation, service utilization and sustainability. This also reflected in the different community outreach services conducted across the state such as cervical cancer screening for community women and civil servants, HIV testing for pregnant women with ensuring linkage to treatment and acceptance of Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC).

Nafisatu Musa Isah

Deputy Director Family and Community services (in charge of Maternal and Child health division) Kaduna State Primary Health Care Board.

I am a registered Public health nurse by profession with a master’s degree in Reproductive Health, and a member of Public Health Nurses of Nigeria, member National Association of Nurses and Midwives of Nigeria. 

I also had professional Development certificates in: Leadership and Management in Global Health, Project Management in Global Health, Management Skills and Effective Leadership, Leadership Enhancement and accountability for Public sector, Health Financing, Health Economic and Public Health Policy also held the position of Chief Nursing officer in charge of 6 primary health care(PHCs) facilities in Kaduna State. I have attended 30 training/Workshops and carried out 5 research...

We have a really important episode for you as we approach World Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) day on 30th January calling for all to act together and act now.

We are going to be talking about female genital schistosomiasis, which affects approximately 56 million girls and women in sub-Saharan Africa. Host, Kim Ozano is joined by co-host Pamela Mbabazi from the United Nations with guests; Rhoda Ndubani, who is a study manager for a female sexual reproductive health screening programme for FGS in Zambia, Christine Masong, who is a PhD student with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine undertaking research in Cameroon, exploring how culture and the social structures affect illness experiences and treatment pathways of girls and women with FGS, and finally, Dr. Victoria Gamba, who is a gynaecologist and advocate for FGS awareness based in Kenya.

If you would like to understand more about FGS, here's some resources for you:

A call to action for universal health coverage: Why we need to address gender inequities in the neglected tropical diseases community

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7067373/

Discussion paper the gender dimensions of neglected tropical diseases from the Access and Delivery Partnership in partnership with LSTM

https://adphealth.org/upload/resource/2523_ADP_Discussion_Paper_NTDs_211119_web.pdf

Useful factsheets on FGS:

Japanese: https://adphealth.org/upload/resource/2523_ADP_Discussion_Paper_NTDs_211119_web.pdf

English: https://adphealth.org/upload/resource/2658_ADP_NTDs_and_Gender_factsheet_280120.pdf

More about our guests;

Dr. Pamela Sabina Mbabazi - Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), WHO headquarters in Geneva

Presently, Pamela is working as a medical epidemiologist in the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Her current research interests include strengthening monitoring and evaluation for neglected tropical diseases programmes particularly in vulnerable populations with a focus on women and children, notably for female genital schistosomiasis (FGS).

She has authored several publications in peer reviewed journals, mainly related to methodologies for tracking public health gains for neglected tropical diseases and the effects of co-morbidities.

Dr. Victoria Gamba - Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Private Practice/Ministry of Health Kenya/University of Nairobi

Passionate about participatory efforts to reduce and eliminate vaccine preventable illnesses and an advocate of gender equality and promoting sexual and reproductive health rights of women and girls, Victoria is a resident obstetrician and gynaecologist at a private health group and a part time consultant with the Ministry of Health Department of Vector-borne and neglected tropical diseases in collaboration with LVCT-health Kenya.

Rhoda Ndubani -Study Manager, Zambart 

Rhoda is the study manager at Zambart on a study called ‘Zipime Weka Schista’, a longitudinal Cohort Study focusing on Integrating Female Sexual Reproductive Health Screening in Zambia focused on one-stop self-sampling for schistosomiasis and other genital infections. The aim of the study is to develop a holistic approach for the community-based diagnosis of female genital schistosomiasis (FGS) through a comprehensive package for sexual and reproductive health screening including human papillomavirus (HPV), sexually transmitted infections (STIs), HIV and Schistosomiasis across endemicity settings (from high to low transmission) in Zambia. The duration of the study is from 2021 to 2025. And they aim to recruit 2500 women in the cohort.

The women are screened for FGS and HPV using self-sampling in the household and at the health facility. The women are provided with...

Our final episode from the Health Systems Research Symposium in Nagasaki showcases transformative ideas in global health systems research and policy. This episode features discussions on interdisciplinary capacity building, decolonising health policy research, One Health approaches, and advancing gender equity in health systems.

Dr. Hanna-Tina Fischer explores innovative capacity-building models and interdisciplinary research frameworks. Dr. Ayat Abu-Agla discusses the importance of decolonisation in health policy and systems research. Dr. Rosie Steege highlights the interconnectedness of humans, animals, and ecosystems through One Health and its implications for antimicrobial resistance. Finally, Dr. Zahra Zeinali reflects on her work advancing gender mainstreaming and intersectionality in health systems research.

This episode offers fresh perspectives for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers dedicated to creating equitable and resilient health systems.

In this episode:

From ReBUILD for Resilience:

Abriti Arjyal -Research Manager, HERD International

Thazin La - Research manager for the health systems research programme, Burnet Institute Myanmar

Our Guests:

Hanna-Tina Fischer – Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Dr. Ayat Abu-Agla - Health Services Management Centre Lead, University of Birmingham, Dubai

Dr. Rosie Steege – Lecturer, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Zahra Zeinali – Doctoral Candidate, Department of Global Health, University of Washington.

Useful links:

• One health
• HSR Global Symposium on Health Systems Research | HSR 2024
• Introducing ReBUILD for Resilience - health systems researchRebuild Consortium

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about current research and debates within global health.

The podcast covers topics like health systems strengthening, gender and intersectionality, tropical diseases (NTDs, TB, Malaria), maternal and child healthcare, mental health, vector-borne diseases, climate change, and co-production approaches.

If you would like your project or programme to feature in an episode or mini-series, get in touch with the producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.

Featuring guest speakers Dr Bintu Mansaray, Lead Research Consultant at the Institute of Gender and Children’s Health Research in Sierra Leone, and Dr Tara Tancred, a senior research associate at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, in today’s episode we hear about doing participatory research with highly vulnerable populations, focusing on women who have survived trafficking and the importance of centering their voices in research processes. 

Listen to find out about: 

• How a sense of community and solidarity between survivors can emerge from the participatory research process 
• Engaging with participants to understand safeguarding concerns from their perspective and to collaboratively decide what can be done to make them feel safe 
• The power of participatory methods such as PhotoVoice and community drama for enabling survivors to communicate and share their experiences of trafficking and reintegration 

Dr Bintu Mansaray

Lead Research Consultant, Institute of Gender and Children’s Health Research

Bintu Mansaray is a medical doctor, and a paediatrics public health specialist. She currently works as a social scientist for the Institute of Gender and Children’s Health Research in Sierra Leone whilst completing her PhD at the University of Bristol on the Multisectoral responses to sexual abuse in Africa. Bintu’s research is focused on children’s health and well-being and sex trafficking in Africa. She has published three children’s public health books on COVID-19, Malaria and Type 1 Diabetes to help Africa’s children learn about these illnesses affecting them. Bintu is particularly interested in building bilateral and mutually beneficial relationships with organisations and research institutions to end child slavery and sex trafficking.  

Dr Tara Tancred 

Senior Research Associate, LSTM

Tara Tancred is a social scientist working for the Centre for Capacity Research at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Much of her research centres on improving the quality and patient-centredness of sexual and reproductive healthcare in low-resource settings. To this end, she has extensive experience supporting different participatory research approaches, driving co-researcher-led and contextually appropriate changes to support implementation of evidence-based practice. She has a particular interest in supporting capacity strengthening for implementation research, especially amongst co-researchers.   

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/dr-tara-tancred  

Exploring Health Systems Resilience with Experts.

This podcast episode, hosted by Dr. Kim Ozano and co-hosted by Professor Sophie Witter, engages in an insightful discussion on health systems resilience, particularly in fragile settings affected by violence, conflict, pandemics, and other shocks. This conversation is part of a mini-series titled 'Stories of Resilience - Local Lives and Health Systems', powered by the ReBUILD for Resilience research consortium (see 'useful links' for links to the other episodes from this series).

The episode features insights from Dr. Sushil Baral of HERD International and Dr. Seye Abimbola from the University of Sydney, who share their experiences and reflections on building resilience in health systems. The discussion navigates the complexities of resilience as a concept, emphasising the importance of community engagement, co-creation, and adopting a learning approach to health systems strengthening. The panel explores the balance between self-reliance and demanding accountability from government systems, addressing the power dynamics and the necessity of a fair distribution of responsibilities across levels of governance.

In this episode:

Dr. Sophie Witter - Professor of International Health Financing and Health Systems, Institute of Global Health and Development, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

Sophie has worked in health and development for the past 35 years, starting with development roles at Save the Children and moving on to academia. Much of her work has focused on reducing financial barriers to accessing health care – how can people get the essential care they need without having to make terrible sacrifices? – but she has also worked on many other important health system topics, such as incentivising health care workers and health system strengthening more generally. All of her research is oriented towards implementation – how to make systems work better for people, especially those who are most disadvantaged.

Dr Sushil Baral - Managing Director, HERD International

Dr. Baral, hailing from a remote hill district in Nepal, brings over two decades of experience in health systems, public health policy, and implementation research, with a particular focus on South Asia. His contributions have significantly impacted national and global health systems, policies, and public health agendas. He emphasises evidence-based practices tailored to local contexts, reflecting a dedication to global health research excellence. Dr. Baral's academic journey highlights innovative problem-solving and substantial contributions to health systems, policies, and disaster response in fragile and shock-prone settings in LMICs.

Dr Seye Abimbola - Associate Professor of Health Systems, University of Sydney, Australia

Seye Abimbola is a health systems researcher from Nigeria, where he has worked at the National Primary Health Care Development Agency on initiatives to strengthen the Primary Health Care system across the country so that it can deliver integrated health services to communities. Seye has also been involved in research on how decentralisation affects health system performance and how community health committees influence and support health services in their own communities. Seye is currently based at the University of Sydney in Australia, where his teaching and research focus on knowledge practices in global health, health system governance, and the adoption and scale-up of health system innovations.

Useful links:

• The Health Workforce in Times of Crisis - Connecting Citizens to Science - This episode is part three of the six-part mini-series "Stories of Resilience: Local Lives and Health Systems," brought to you by ReBUILD for Resilience. In this episode, we discuss the challenges faced by the health

In this series we are talking about responding to the challenge of non-communicable disease in East Africa together 

In recent decades, rates of non-communicable diseases (NCD), such as diabetes and high blood pressure have risen sharply in sub-Saharan Africa and are now linked to approximately 2 million deaths per year. Countries across the continent are rapidly looking to address this new epidemic, but this is difficult with much of the healthcare system still focused on the treatment of communicable disease, such as HIV. This podcast series will explore many aspects of the problems related to NCDs across sub-Saharan Africa, including how African & European researchers from the RESPOND-Africa group, and healthcare providers and governments in East Africa are working with local communities to better understand the issues related to NCDs and how we can best address their care. In particular, we’re interested in how integrating the care of NCDs with other, currently well treated conditions, like HIV can benefit the patients and local healthcare systems by improving care whilst saving them both time and money. 

In this week’s episode we hear from Dr Flazia Zalwango from the Medical Research Council/ Uganda Virus Research Institute and LSHTM and from Dr Anu Garrib, a consultant in public health medicine working at LSTM in the RESPOND Africa/NIHR Group for the prevention and management of HIV-infection and non-communicable diseases. Our guests discuss: 

• Barriers to engaging community groups across the life cycle, including children, adolescents, and older people to inform prevention, treatment and management of disease conditions like NCDs.  
• How to best engage policy makers in research uptake  
• The problem of NCDs in sub-Saharan Africa and how they are being addressed currently 
• How communities can be involved in addressing the problem of NCDs going forward 
• Why and how can integrated NCD & HIV benefit these communities

Our guest host for this series is Dr Joseph Okebe

Senior Research Associate, LSTM 

My research looks at how primary healthcare services for people living with chronic health conditions such as diabetes, HIV-infection and hypertension can be improved. We recently completed a study in Tanzania and Uganda where we looked at the impact of having all these services together in the same clinic affect patient’s retention in care and control of their health conditions.  

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/dr-joseph-okebe  

twitter@ jo_okebe 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-okebe-a049399/  

Dr Anu Garrib

Principal research associate, RESPOND-Africa partnership, LSTM

I am a consultant in public health medicine and have been working at LSTM in the RESPOND Africa/NIHR Group for the prevention and management of HIV-infection and non-communicable diseases in Africa since 2017.  

My current research focusses on evaluating strategies for the integrated delivery of HIV and non-communicable disease care, as well as clinical studies on the prevention of diabetes. The study on integration of HIV and NCD services was a feasibility study aimed at determining if an integrated delivery of care for these conditions was acceptable to patients and healthcare workers, and involved extensive engagement with these groups to determine how best to structure the service. Although the clinical trial is a very different kind of study, the continued engagement of patients is critical as we try to determine how best to support...

In this first episode of our three-part miniseries, "Transforming Maternal and Newborn Health," we dive into a groundbreaking quality improvement programme that has made significant strides in integrating HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria services into antenatal and postnatal care across Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

We explore emerging evidence on how health systems can adapt and respond to changing landscapes, including the impact of COVID-19, to deliver better outcomes for mothers and newborns. Featuring insights from leading experts, we discuss the challenges, successes, and innovative approaches that have strengthened the capacity of health workers and improved access to essential care. This episode sets the stage for the next discussions on capacity building and sustainability, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in global health and health systems strengthening.

Chapters:

00:00:00 – Introduction and Series Overview

00:01:30 – Responding to COVID-19 and Building Resilience

00:03:20 – Maternal Health Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa

00:04:45 – Strengthening Health Workforce Capacity

00:06:20 – Key Findings and Lessons Learned

00:08:04 – Addressing Gender-Based Violence and Mental Health

00:09:17 – Practical Impact and Stories from Nigeria

00:11:54 – Next Steps and Future Recommendations

00:14:19 – Adapting to COVID-19 Challenges

00:17:15 – Final Advice and Conclusions

In this episode:

Dr. Rael Mutai, Regional Technical Advisor (MNH), Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Tropical

Rael is a public health specialist with over 21 years’ experience in health and development. She is passionate about health systems strengthening, Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights and Quality Maternal and Newborn Health. Rael has been involved with the programme in the last 3 years, as the Regional Technical Adviser for Kenya and Tanzania. The Programme uses global evidence customized to country context for improved maternal and newborn outcomes. The programme has addressed gaps in ANC-PNC service delivery through capacity building of healthcare workers and integrated approaches to care.

Prof. Charles Ameh - Programme Lead, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Charles led the implementation of the GF ANC/PNC quality improvement programme in the last 3 years. This involves identifying problems and co-creating solutions with stakeholders in Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. Key interventions designed and tested during this programme are relevant to several communities: maternity care providers, researchers, MNH programme managers, health professional associations and regulatory bodies, training institutions, women of reproductive age and their families in LMICs.

Dr. Oladipo Aremu, Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist, Adeoyo Maternity Teaching Hospital , Oyo State, Nigeria

Dr Oladipo Aremu has been involved in research work relating to post-partum haemorrhage, maternal and child health for the last three years. His contribution to the post-partum haemorrhage research has helped to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality. During the period of the research, the cost of the drug administered on patients resulted in remarkable cost savings when compared to cost of blood transfusion. Previous research activities involved in also contributed to improvement in respectful maternity care and upgrading the health worker-patient relationship.

Useful links:

• Empowering Health Workers: Nigeria's Positive Shift in Maternal & Newborn Care fuels Policy Change
• This is a film from the WOMAN Trials at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, as part of the Healthier Together series presented by the WHO...

On this episode we are delighted to be joined by Dr Brunah Schall, post-doctoral researcher at Fiocruz Minas in Brazil, and Dr Julia Smith, assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada. We hear from our speakers about the gendered dynamics of the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on research which has been conducted in Brazil and Canada as part of the multi-country Gender and Covid-19 project.  

We cover topics including:  

• The economic impact of the pandemic on women, who took on a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work and took longer to re-enter the workforce  
• Female health workers’ experiences of racism, misogyny, stigma and violence on the frontline 
• How research from the Gender and Covid-19 project is influencing policy across countries

Dr Brunah Schall

Postdoc, Fiocruz Minas

Brunah is a biologist with a PhD in Sociology from Brazil. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Fiocruz Minas, working on projects on gender and health, especially the international project Gender and Covid-19, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her research focuses on women from vulnerable settings in urban and rural communities in Brazil, highlighting the effects of the pandemic in their livelihoods, food security and overall health with the purpose of connecting them with policy makers.  

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PAC00487_Gender-Covid-19-Brazil-food-insecurity-English.pdf 

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/PAC00519_Gender-Covid-19-Health-Workers-Brazil-1.pdf 

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/gender-and-race-on-the-frontline.pdf 

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/resources/the-pandemic-response-plan-in-brazil-must-include-a-critical-perspective-on-gender-and-race-2/ 

https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/editorial/water-is-life-the-struggle-of-quilombola-women-for-access-to-water-in-the-midst-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-brazil/ 

Dr Julia Smith

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Dr Julia Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. She has a PhD in Social and International Studies from the University of Bradford, where she also completed her Masters of Arts as a Rotary World Peace Fellow. Her research interests centre on gender-based policy analysis of health crises, commercial and political determinants of health, feminist theory and community-based research. She is currently a Principal Investigator on the Gender and COVID-19 Research Project, which is conducting gender-based analysis of the response to COVID-19 in multiple countries and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and...

• Our guests Jacob Creswell from the STOP TB Partnership and Brenda Mungai from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, provide insight into how technology is playing a key role in TB diagnosis, and highlights from the discussion include: 
• The technologies currently available to help diagnose TB 
• The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in TB diagnosis 
• The involvement of communities in the development of AI and the benefits that people are seeing from these developments 

Dr. Jacob Creswell is Head of Innovations & Grants at the Stop TB Partnership. He coordinates the TB REACH initiative which is focused on improving programmatic aspects of tuberculosis case detection and treatment outcomes. He serves as a global expert on different aspects of improving tuberculosis case detection including private sector engagement and active case finding. Jacob is currently working on the introduction of new diagnostic and screening tools for TB including artificial intelligence and how they can fit into more efficient and effective diagnostic algorithms. Jacob has published more than 80 scientific publication and has over 20 years of experience working at Stop TB, WHO and CDC on TB and HIV. 

Dr Brenda Nyambura Mungai 

PhD candidate, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Director of Tuberculosis and Lung Health  Centre for Health Solutions-Kenya 

A medical doctor Bachelor’s degree of Medicine and Surgery (University of Nairobi) with a postgraduate diploma in HIV management (Colleges of Medicine South Africa) and a Masters in Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases (Liverpool, United Kingdom). She has over fifteen years national and international professional experience in clinical care and public health approaches to management of infectious diseases especially in TB/ HIV in developing countries. Currently pursuing a PhD in Global Health at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine focusing on operational modelling, and the role of chest X-ray and computer-aided detection software in tuberculosis screening in low -and lower-middle income countries.  

Phumeza Tisile is a TB survivor, researcher and advocate for TB patients at TB Proof. In this episode Phumeza shares her moving and powerful lived experience of being an Extremely Drug Resistant (XDR) TB survivor. She starts her story describing the challenges of first understanding her symptoms and gaining an accurate diagnosis of TB, how this led to complex treatment of taking 30 tablets a day and an injection, followed by 2 years of hospitalisation and loss of hearing for 5 years. Her research is now focused on the immediate and long-term impacts of being a TB patient and survivor including managing stigmatisation, disability and mental health conditions. Phumeza calls for researchers to be aware of the language they use to describe people with lived experience and challenges scientists and decision makers for more affordable treatment strategies that meet patients where they are- geographically, financially and personally. 

• The Global Coalition of TB Advocates(GCTA) is a global platform of people affected by TB that amplifies community engagement and strengthens the capacity of TB activists at all levels .http://gctacommunity.org/?v=7d31e0da1ab9
• TB Proof Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/TBproof/

In this thoroughly engaging episode, we hear from Dr.Steven Watiti who works for  Mildmay Uganda, a leading HIV and AIDS service organisation, about living and aging with HIV and AIDS. Steven shares his story of family life, courage, loss, survival, learning, and advocacy. He speaks about the importance of mental health support and social capital when living with a lifelong health condition and calls for others to respond.  

Dr Steven Watiti

Patient representative on Respond-Africa Partnership

After studying Medicine at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, Dr. Watiti, was a medical officer, Rubaga Hospital, Kampala from 1985-1988. He practiced medicine privately from 1988-2004 at Entebbe Road clinic and JOY Medical Centre Ndeeba, Kampala. From 2004, he has been working at Mildmay Uganda, a leading HIV and AIDS service organisation. An HIV activist and ardent advocate for improved and sustainable health for all, Dr. Watiti believes with hindsight that he acquired HIV between 1985 and 1986 while working as a junior medical officer. In 2000, he began ARVs after contracting tuberculosis, cancer (Kaposi’s sarcoma), and meningitis. In 2006, he started his weekly column on HIV in New Vision, Uganda’s leading daily newspaper. His column appears Mondays under the heading: “Towards zero: with Doctor Watiti”. He has published two books on HIV: “HIV and AIDS: 100 Commonly Asked Questions” and “Conquering HIV and AIDS: My personal experience of living with HIV”. Dr Waititi works with the Respond Africa partnership as an expert patient ensuring that patient needs, views and voices are heard and considered and addressed when designing and implementing research projects. 

Twitter: @WatitiStephen 

https://inteafrica.org/ 

Dr. Rhona Mijumbi-Deve

Dr. Rhona Mijumbi-Deve is a senior lecturer of public policy at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and heads the Policy Unit at the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Clinical Research Programme in Blantyre, Malawi. Rhona trained as a medical doctor and later as a Clinical Epidemiologist and Biostatistician, and health policy analyst. She has spent the past decade doing health systems and policy research. Her special interest is in exploring the nexus of evidence, and policy and decision-making processes, especially in low- and middle-income countries. She especially is interested in understanding this in the contexts of emergencies, health security and health diplomacy. 

In this episode we are joined by Dr Sara Parker, Reader in Development Studies at Liverpool John Moores University and Professor Madhusudan Subedi from the Patan Academy of Health Sciences and the Tribhuvan University in Nepal, who will be talking to us about their work on women’s reproductive health and dignity in Nepal, with a focus on understanding menstrual stigmas and engaging with communities to challenge practices of menstrual exclusion. 

We talk about: 

• How menstrual exclusion impacts the health and wellbeing of women and girls  
• Why it is important to work with men, families and the wider community – as well as women and girls - to change norms and beliefs around menstruation 
• The value of interdisciplinary and creative research approaches for understanding realities at the local level and how this can feed into social transformation 

Dr Sara Parker 

Reader in Development Studies, Liverpool John Moores University Sociology

Sara Parker is Reader in Development Studies in the Sociology Department at Liverpool John Moores University. She has over 30 years of action research experience in Nepal following on from her PhD on non-formal education and women’s participation. She has led a number of research initiatives in Nepal including Higher Education links between the UK, Nepal and Bangladesh with a focus on gender and education.  She is committed to collaborative action research and is currently leading the BA/GCRF funded ‘Dignity Without Danger’ research project exploring menstrual stigma and taboos. This project connects researchers in the UK and Nepal to NGOs and activists in Nepal to deepen understating of the complexities of menstrual discrimination.  The research project also has a strong emphasis on working with local communities and utilises creative means to produce policy recommendations and creative visual outputs that can be used as advocacy tools.  She is an active member of the Menstrual Health and Hygiene Partnership Alliance in Nepal and is co-editing a book on Menstruation in Nepal to be published by Routledge India.  

She has recently been elected as the Chair of the British Nepal Academic Council BNAC and is a committee member of the Britain and Nepal NGO network BRANNGO. She also advises on a number of NGO boards including Elevate Nepal. Sara has co-authored papers and articles as well as written a children’s book focusing on fair trade and Nepal.  

Staff profile LJMU Sara Parker | Liverpool John Moores University (ljmu.ac.uk) 

 DWD Social media @DWDNEpal  

Instagram DwD Nepal (@dignitywithoutdanger) • Instagram photos and videos 

Twitter Dignity Without Danger (@DWDNepal) / Twitter 

Facebook (13) Dignity Without Danger: Menstruation in Nepal | Facebook 

@LJMUSociology 

Qualitative Analysis in Action | Liverpool John Moores University (ljmu.ac.uk) 

Blogs on Menstruation in Nepal  

In this episode, the focus is on Tanzania. Together with co-host Lucy Nyaga, we have conversations with Dr Ahmad Makuwani, Assistant Director, Reproductive Health & Child Health, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Tanzania, Dr Leonard Katalambula, Head of Department of Public Health, University of Dodoma and Dr Rukia Bakar Rajab, Dean, School of Medicine, State University of Zanzibar. We discuss how the programme ‘Quality Improvement (QI) of integrated HIV, TB, and malaria services in Antenatal and Postnatal care (ANC and PNC)’ funded by the Global Fund and Takeda Pharmaceuticals uses a blended learning and master training approach to improve the skills, practice and attitudes of health workers within women and newborn health services. We hear how much community engagement is valued by the Ministry of Health and how the programme will ensure sustainability through partnerships with universities, multilevel health system and communities. 

Dr. Leonard Katalambula  

Dr. Leonard Katalambula is PhD holder in public health and head of public health department at the University of Dodoma. He has over 14 years’ experience in teaching research and consultancy related to public health. He is a project lead of the Quality Improvement for Integrated HIV, TB and Malaria Services during Antenatal and Postnatal care in Tanzania, The project is funded by Global Fund and implemented by LSTM, Ministry of Health and the University of Dodoma. Dr Katalambula is also a principal investigator of the project “Meals Education and Garden for School in Adolescents. He has been engaged in several implementation research including Effectiveness of letter and brochure and brochure to a male partner on increasing women’s uptake of cervical cancer screening in Bahi, Dodoma: A randomized controlled trial. Effectiveness of a community-based intervention (Konga model) in addressing the factors contributing to viral load suppression among children living with HIV in Tanzania: A cluster-randomized clinical trial study. Dr Katalambula is a champion of a youth club at the University of Dodoma whose main objective is to promote health among youths especially reproductive health. 

Dr. Rukia Rajab Bakar

Acting Dean, School of Health and Medical Sciences, School of Health and Medical Sciences, State University of Zanzibar (SUZA)

Connects research/implementation with people and communities is very important through working in partnership with policy makers, local leaders and communities. This will definitely improves the quality of maternal and new-born health care and reduce maternal morbidity or mortality in the community.

Lucy Nyaga

Country Director, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Kenya 

My name is Lucy Nyaga. I am the Country Director, Liverpool School of Tropical medicine, in Kenya. I have a background in Medical Anthropology and Public Health with extensive experience in promoting implementation of research results into policy and practice with a special focus on MNH.  With twenty years’ experience working in health programming, my experience and expertise in MNH has involved managing and implementing programmes that incorporate implementation research to inform effective programming and policy influence. Working with a range of organizations ranging from governments, academic and research institutions, UN agencies, and national & INGO, I have led and contributed to key MNH research that has led to policy influence in Eastern Africa. 

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/lucy-nyaga 

In the first episode of this TB series, we speak to Katherine Horton from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Jeremiah Chikovore from the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa. We explore the relationship between TB and gender, and discuss: 

• How gender affects access to TB prevention and care, considering social norms, intersectionality and relationships between and within family and communities 
• Why considering gender and other intersecting axis of inequities is important for equitable access to TB prevention and care 
• How the gender inequalities in TB intersect with society’s perception of vulnerability and masculinity 

Co-host bio for Series 3

Dr. Rhona Mijumbi-Deve is a senior lecturer of public policy at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and heads the Policy Unit at the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Clinical Research Programme in Blantyre, Malawi. Rhona trained as a medical doctor and later as a Clinical Epidemiologist and Biostatistician, and health policy analyst. She has spent the past decade doing health systems and policy research. Her special interest is in exploring the nexus of evidence, and policy and decision-making processes, especially in low- and middle-income countries. She especially is interested in understanding this in the contexts of emergencies, health security and health diplomacy. 

Dr Katherine Horton 

Assistant Professor, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK 

Katherine Horton is an Assistant Professor with the TB Modelling Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She is an epidemiologist and mathematical modeller who has been studying gender differences in TB burden and care since 2014. Dr Horton is the LSHTM Programme Team Leader and cross-consortium Modelling Working Group Coordinator for the LIGHT Consortium, which aims to provide new evidence on the effectiveness of different gender sensitive pathways and approaches to health for those with TB in urban, HIV-prevalent settings.  

https://protect-eu.mimecast.com/s/w_TaCNYgBSNYO02Hm9dXg?domain=journals.plos.org

https://protect-eu.mimecast.com/s/mJF_COPjDUAD7p6fvV643?domain=youtube.com

Dr Jeremiah Chikovore 

Senior Research Specialist, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa and SSHIFTB 

Jeremiah Chikovore is sociologist based at the Human Sciences Research Council, in Durban, South Africa. Over the last odd two decades, he has been involved in research to understand men’s location in the realm of public health, from sexual and reproductive health issues including contraceptive use, abortion, gendered violence, and adolescent wellbeing, to TB and HIV. With a grounding in qualitative and interpretive methodologies, and applying complexity-framed analytical approaches, Jeremiah has attempted to explore the intersectional gender construction and sustenance of health-related behaviours. He is a former Wellcome Trust Fellow, whose work on barriers to men’s engagement in care-seeking for TB-related symptoms in Malawi employed a seminal angle in tuberculosis research. Jeremiah is engaged as expert panellist and resource person for global agencies and...

In this episode we talk to April Monroe and Danielle Piccinini Black from the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs about social and behavioral considerations for vector control and the human-centred design approach. We cover topics including: 

• What human-centred design is, with an example of how the approach has been applied to improve long-lasting insecticidal net design in Ghana  
• The importance of empathy and flexibility in conducting research that puts affected communities first 
• How strong, equitable relationships with communities can help to mitigate ethical challenges that often accompany traditional research approaches

April Monroe, PhD | Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

April Monroe has over a decade of experience in global health, focusing on malaria research, program implementation, and policy. Her work aims to increase the impact of malaria interventions by learning from and engaging with people most affected by the disease. This includes understanding challenges to and motivations for malaria prevention and treatment practices and how gaps in protection arise. It also includes engaging stakeholders at all levels to help ensure new malaria control approaches respond to peoples’ needs and lifestyles and are rooted within systems that support long-term success. April earned a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, an MSPH degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a focus in Social and Behavioral Interventions, and a certificate in Innovation and Human Centered Design from the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School.  

Social Media 

LinkedIn 

Twitter: @AprilCMonroe 

Related Blog Posts/Media 

Rethinking Mosquito Net Use in Ghana 

CCP to Help Evaluate New Spatial Repellent for Mosquitoes 

Elimination of Malaria in Zanzibar Remains Elusive Despite Progress 

To Halt Malaria, More Research Focused on Human Behavior Needed 

Beyond Bed Nets: Mosquitoes Don’t Just Bite at Bedtime 

Related Peer-Reviewed Publications 

Improving malaria control by understanding human behaviour 

Unlocking the human factor to increase effectiveness and sustainability of malaria vector control 

Methods and indicators for measuring patterns of human exposure to malaria vectors 

Understanding the gap between access and use: a qualitative study on barriers and facilitators to insecticide-treated net use in...

In this episode we hear about a participatory action research project in Guatemala, funded by the Director's Catalyst Fund at LSTM, that co-designed a tool for health leaders and community partners to assess and improve urban health governance.  

The project was based in two Guatemalan urban municipalities; Villa Nueva and Mixco. We speak with Guillermo Hegel, the project lead who was also the Health Director at Villa Nueva Municipality at the time of the project. We also hear from Yaimie Lopez and Cintia Cansado who coordinated and evaluated the project. They share their experience of participatory research and working with policy makers.  

The research team together with co-researchers who were urban health stakeholders looked at 4 domains, Governance, leadership accountability and multi-sectoral action. They first defined what these terms were, then they co-analysed existing tools to measure governance performance and designed an online tool which could be used to rank current performance and areas for improvement which could then track over time.  

The tool involved a number of qualitative questions that required discussions and reflections about governance in their work and required a level of trust and transparency which is further explored by our guests.  

This Episode features: 

Wesam Mansour (co-host) - Health Systems Researcher, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

Wesam is a Health System Researcher with research expertise in health workforce and health systems strengthening in fragile contexts using qualitative research and participatory action research approaches. Her work includes working in the areas of gender, equity and justice and how to apply those concepts to develop gender-equitable, resilient and inclusive health systems. She is currently working, in LSTM, on the ReBUILD4Resilience project which is health system research in Fragile and Shock-Prone (FASP) settings in 4 countries (Nepal, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, and Lebanon). In ReBUILD, they worked with the Close to Community (CTC) providers in FASP settings to explore how participatory action research can support CTC providers to address gender norms and power relations within their communities and in the health systems in Lebanon and Nepal. 

Links:

LSTM - Wesam Mansour

ReBUILD Consortium

ReBUILD - Gender Project

Guillermo Hegel, Project Coordinator, INCAP 

Since 2020 Guillermo has been a researcher at CIIPEC. He coordinates a participatory action research project in collaboration with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. From 2014 to early 2020, he was health director of the municipality of Villa Nueva, Guatemala. A core part of his tasks was to articulate 'Health-in-All Policies' and to improve the primary health care system in urban setting through participatory processes. Between 2008-2013, he worked at PAHO/WHO Guatemala, as an advisor for social determinants of health and the ´Healthy Cities´ initiative, leading and contributing to several programs in Guatemala and Latin America. He began his career in public health in 2000, promoting small-scale projects at the...

In this episode we are celebrating World TB Day, this year’s campaign is ‘YES! We Can End TB’ and is all about solidarity and collective action. It centres on the increased engagement of those affected by TB, communities and civil society that are leading the movement towards ending this disease.

This episode features the LIGHT consortium which aims to provide new evidence on the effectiveness of different gender-sensitive pathways and approaches to health for those with TB in urban, HIV-prevalent settings across Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi and Kenya. Our co-host Samara Barnes, who has lived experience of TB in the UK, speaks with researchers Toyosi Adekeye in Nigeria and Jasper Nidoi in Uganda from the LIGHT consortium about the ways they are enaging with affected communities in their work. Samara also shares her experience from the UK and the conversation reflects on the differences of TB across contexts.

This episode features:

Samara Barnes Affected Community Co-Lead at the UK Academics and Professionals to End TB (UKAPTB)

Samara is an Affected Community Co-Lead at the UK Academics and Professionals to End TB (UKAPTB). She was diagnosed with active pulmonary TB in late 2015 and it was discovered she was also drug resistant as her treatment went on.

Until that point, Samara knew little about the illness apart from the fact that her Grandad had died of TB many years previously. Samara has raised money for TB Alert and has been part of their peer supporter programme too. She has also studied and written papers on the Global disparities in TB treatment. It is important for Samara to raise awareness of this illness, be an advocate for reducing the stigma surrounding it and to encourage decision makers in the UK to ensure they keep to their commitment of a year on year reduction of TB and contribute to the WHO's commitment to eliminate TB by 2035. Samara works for a national children's charity and is also a borough and county councilor.

Dr Jasper Nidoi - Early Career Researcher, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, U.K and Makerere University Lung Institute, Uganda.

Jasper Nidoi is a Ugandan medical doctor with specialist training in health economics and health systems and policy research from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. For over 5 years, she has been involved in the design and implementation of clinical trials that have evaluated drugs for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases in Uganda. She is a health economist on a clinical trial that is evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of standardized medication for MDR-TB. She was a co-investigator in a study that evaluated the impact of socio-economic factors on tuberculosis treatment outcomes in one of the poorest regions in Uganda.

Her research interests are in the socio-economic determinants of health as they pertain to tuberculosis and the use of decision-analytic models to systematically synthesise data for the economic evaluation of healthcare interventions to guide policy that maximises resource allocation in the presence of uncertainty.

Dr Jasper Nidoi joins the LIGHT Consortium as a researcher where she will contribute to generating evidence on gender-sensitive pathways and approaches for TB to increase the proportion of men in urban areas with TB who successfully complete screening and initiate treatment.

Dr Toyosi Adekeye - Senior Lecturer Department of Community Medicine and primary Healthcare Bingham University and Research Uptake Manager, LIGHT Consortium Zankli Research Centre (ZRC) Nigeria

Dr. Adekeye is a Medical Doctor and Public Health expert who serves as a senior lecturer in the Department of Community Medicine and Primary Healthcare and the LIGHT consortium Research Uptake Manager, at the Zankli Research Centre (ZRC), Bingham University, New Karu, Nasarawa State where he manages and coordinates all

In this special “warm-up” episode for the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR2024) in Nagasaki, Japan, we explore the conference themes, their relevance to global health, and the critical role of resilient health systems in fragile settings. This episode offers insights for attendees and those interested in health systems worldwide, examining the intersection of conflict and crisis, climate resilience, justice, and governance in building sustainable, people-centered health systems. ReBUILD for Resilience team members share how their work aligns with the conference themes, highlighting the importance of supporting vulnerable communities in challenging contexts.

See 'useful links' for previous health systems strengthening episodes.

In this episode:

Kate Hawkins - Managing Director, Pamoja Communications

Kate has extensive experience working with research partners to develop strategies, engage stakeholders, and create impactful communication products. Skilled at translating academic research for diverse audiences, she has years of experience across NGOs, academia, and the private sector. Kate has managed numerous websites and platforms to promote research and foster partnerships, enhancing demand for research communications by engaging policymakers, brokering academia-government partnerships, and building capacity for evidence use.

Joanna Khalil – Research Fellow, American University of Beirut and ReBUILD for Resilience

Joanna is a research fellow and a public health practitioner working with various communities around Lebanon, including refugees, in formal and informal settlements. Her key strength is qualitative research methodology.

She has been involved in a multinational research study, exploring tobacco and waterpipe smoking, as well as health warnings, translating findings to policies. She carried out baseline assessments and evaluations of health and social centres in underprivileged areas and refugee camps, aiming at strengthening the health response in emergencies on topics related to reproductive health, mental health, education, WASH, cash assistance, emergency relief, resilience and child labour.

Shophika Regmi - Senior Manager: Health System Research, Evaluation and Learning, HERD International, Nepal

Shophika Regmi is a health systems researcher at HERD International, Nepal, leading learning site research for the ReBUILD for Resilience consortium. With over a decade of experience, her work focuses on enhancing local health system resilience through improved governance and evidence-based planning. Shophika has led numerous projects to strengthen health outcomes for marginalised groups across areas like maternal health, nutrition, climate change, and health information systems.

Useful links:

• Health Systems Financing in Fragile Settings
• Migration, Displacement and Health Systems
• Non-state and informal actors in fragile settings
• The Health Workforce in Times of Crisis
• Gender, health systems resilience and equity
• Revisiting Resilience in Health Systems Research
• HSR Global Symposium on Health Systems Research | HSR 2024
• Introducing ReBUILD for Resilience - health systems researchRebuild Consortium

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Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about current research and debates within global health.

The podcast covers topics like...

In this week’s episode we hear from our co-host Robinson Karuga in his role as a Research, Evaluation and Learning Manager at LVCT. Robinson has been part of a team implementing a participatory action research approach to improve health and wellbeing in two informal settlements in Nairobi. Robinson shares with us: 

• How data collected with community co-researchers using photovoice (see S4E1) was presented to key stakeholders like chiefs, village elders, civil society organisations and community volunteers so they could identify and prioritise key health and wellbeing issues  
• The development of work improvement teams that were responsible for driving actions for change together with key decision makers, government bodies and those who held power such as police 
• The journey from data collection to problem identification, root cause analysis, developing actions and implementing them within the system 
• The role of researchers as facilitators, coaches, and morale support, as well as assessing and navigating power dynamics through reflexivity 

Robinson Karuga is a Health Systems and Policy Research specialist. His area of specialization is community health systems research, with a focus on community participation in governance and embedding of quality improvement approaches. Karuga is a co-investigator in ARISE (Accountability and Responsiveness in Informal Settlements for Equity), a multi-country research consortium that seeks to generate evidence on how to apply community-based participatory approaches to empower marginalized residents of urban informal settlements to advocate for improvements to factors that affect their health and wellbeing. Within ARISE, Robinson connects citizens with science through the implementation of community-based participatory research such as photo voice and building the capacity of co-researchers in reflexive methods. 

Robinson Karuga

Research, Evaluation and Learning Manager, LVCT Health 

As the Research Capacity Strengthening lead in the ARISE Consortium, Karuga is responsible for developing and implementing the Consortium’s capacity strengthening strategy that targets 29 early and mid-career researchers, a Ph.D. cohort of 9 candidates, and community co-researchers in four countries across Africa (Kenya, Sierra Leone) and Asia (India and Bangladesh).Robinson Karuga is currently the Research Evaluations and Learning Manager at LVCT Health, a Kenyan not-for-profit organization that seeks to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable and marginalized populations through research, technical support to governments, and policy advocacy.  

In this week’s episode we talk about COVID-19 and how travel and public health restrictions presented challenges to ensuring that urban marginalised voices were heard by researchers and policy makers in India and Bangladesh. Our impressive guests Professor Sabina Faiz Rashid and Senior Research Fellow Dr.Surekha Garimella discuss the importance of having established long-term relationships with people, communities and supporting organisations which enabled research to continue and ensured that the needs of people in urban spaces were reaching decision makers. Our guests share;  

• what happened when Covid-19 hit urban informal communities in India and Bangladesh 
• the personal and professional passion of researchers to work with communities, not only for research purposes but in solidarity for the struggles faced  
• their own career journeys of humility, unlearning, connectedness and shared humanity that shaped their lives and relationships with communities 

Dr Surekha Garimella

Senior Research Fellow, George Institute for Global Health, India

Garimella Surekha has a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition, a Master of Science in Nutrition & Food science, a Master of Philosophy in Applied economics, and a PhD in Public Health, Gender, and Work. Her research interests are in gender, women, work, and political economy; Gendered health systems and accountability; feminist theory and practice and ethics of research practice. She has worked in implementation and research in gender, nutrition, health and wellbeing among women, children, and adolescents in informal urban settlements in Delhi and Tamil Nadu as well as researched on the health and wellbeing experiences of women workers in urban informal settlements in Delhi. Currently she leads the work on health and wellbeing of waste workers under ARISE (Accountability for urban informality) in India. 

https://www.georgeinstitute.org.in/people/surekha-garimella

Sabina Faiz Rashid

Professor, BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University

Sabina F. Rashid, PhD, is Dean and Professor at the BRAC School of Public Health, BRAC University. A medical anthropologist by training, she has over 25 years of work experience in Bangladesh. Her areas of research and teaching interest and experience are ethnographic and qualitative research, with a focus on urban populations, adolescents, and marginalized groups. She is particularly interested in examining the impact of structural inequalities and inequities and intersectional factors that affect the ability of these populations to realize their health and rights.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0916-2631

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sabina-faiz-rashid-5229671aa

Twitter: twitter.com/bracjpgsph

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/BRACJPGSPH

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bracu-jpgsph

Our team of podcasters were roaming the halls of HSR2022, capturing the thoughts and takeways of the presenters and delegates after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement. 

In today’s special episode we have: 

Professor Anuj Kapilashrami – Professor in Global Health Policy & Equity, University of Essex 

Dr Reza Majdzadeh – Senior Lecturer in Global Public Health, University of Essex 

Dr Neethi V Rao – Consultant, WHO 

We will compile and share further conversations and insights from the symposium over the coming weeks.  

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast connect discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change linked to health. 

In this episode we talk to Noela Gwani and Luret Lar about two participatory methods were used as part of the COUNTDOWN project in Nigeria to explore community structures and spaces; transect walks and social mapping. We discuss how these methods can be used to: 

• Facilitate community entry and raise awareness of projects 
• Bring together diverse groups of community members to discuss their problems 
• Identify structures that could be used in programme implementation

Dr Luret Lar, Department of Community Medicine, College of Health Sciences 

University of Jos and Jos University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria. 

I am a medical doctor, consultant public health physician and a masters holder in international public health from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. I am currently a lecturer in the Department of Community Medicine, University of Jos; with interest in international public health. For the past six years, I was the research manager for the couNTDown project, a multi-country and multidisciplinary implementation research. We employed participatory methods to collaboratively design solutions to neglected tropical diseases programme challenges. I have been involved in local, regional and global research and networking focussed on community participation and health system’s strengthening.    

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/alumni-and-friends/alumni-profiles/dr-luret-lar 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Luret-A-Lar 

https://countdown.lstmed.ac.uk/about-countdownhttps://countdown.lstmed.ac.uk/about-countdown 

https://www.sightsavers.org/blogs/2018/06/how-participatory-research-helps-tackle-neglected-tropical-diseases/; 

https://countdown.lstmed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/centre/Countdown%20Learning%20Pack%20Kaduna%20State.pdf 

https://countdown.lstmed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/centre/Countdown%20Learning%20Pack%20Ogun%20State.pdf 

https://countdown.lstmed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/centre/Countdown%20PGP_0.pdf 

Noela Gwani, COUNTDOWN Nigeria 

A social scientist with experience of participatory, inclusive and qualitative research, I worked on the COUNTDOWN project as a Team Lead and collaborated with Ministries of Health to better engage communities and stakeholders in improving equitable Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) program delivery. I have been involved in the production and dissemination of research outputs such as practical tools to support participatory action planning, as well

Our team of podcasters are roaming the halls of HSR2022 to bring you the thoughts and takeways of the presenters and delegates after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement.

In today’s special episode (capturing thoughts from 02/11/22) we have:

Dr. Dheepa Rajan - Health Systems Adviser, WHO

Dr. Anne Musuva – Country Director, ThinkWell

Rachael Farquhar – Senior Research Officer, Burnet Institute

More conference coverage coming your way throughout the week!

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast connect discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change linked to health.

Welcome to another episode of the Connecting Citizens to Science podcast, where we explore the dynamic role of public involvement in advancing health research. In this episode, hosted by Dr. Kim Ozano, we delve into the impactful world of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) with insights from the PPI Summer School at the University of Limerick.

Episode Guests:

Dr. Jon Salsberg - Senior Lecturer in Primary Healthcare Research, University of Limerick

A dedicated public health researcher, Dr. Salsberg has an academic background in health promotion and development anthropology. His research primarily explores the dynamics of research partnerships and the transition of research leadership from academic institutions to community stakeholders.

Over his career, Dr. Salsberg has been involved in collaborative research with a diverse array of stakeholders, including patients, health practitioners, community organisations, policymakers, and health service decision-makers. His extensive work with indigenous communities includes his significant involvement in the Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project, which is detailed here (http://www.ksdpp.org/) .

In this episode, Jon discusses the evolution and impact of the PPI IGNITE Network.

Lora Ruth Wogu - Founder and CEO of Sickle Cell and Thalassemia Ireland

Lora Ruth Wogu is an Allied Health Professional and a passionate advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion in healthcare, focusing on quality patient care for migrants and individuals with disabilities. As the founder and CEO of Sickle Cell and Thalassemia Ireland, she champions initiatives to educate and improve care for those affected by these conditions. Lora also leads the Migrant Health Alliance, aiming to enhance research participation and address barriers faced by migrant communities in healthcare settings. Her work is driven by a commitment to ensuring compassionate, competent, and inclusive healthcare for all, making her a respected voice in health advocacy and policy discussions.

Lora shares her experiences with engaging migrant communities in health research.

Alison Johnson - keynote speaker PPI Summer School 2023

Alison is a passionate advocate for patient, public, and carer involvement in healthcare, focusing on serious medical conditions. Her work in PPI began as a research participant, evolving into roles as a collaborator, where she champions the inclusion of patient and carer voices in health research. A lifelong learner, Alison's voluntary efforts extend to mentoring researchers and advising on best practices for effective patient engagement.

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Follow us on Twitter at @podcast_CCS to stay updated on upcoming episodes and engage with our community.

Thank you for tuning in, and we look forward to having you join us in the halls of the PPI Summer School this June!

Want to get involved?

If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.  

In this week's episode, we will be hearing from two PhD students from the ARISE Consortium. ARISE stands for accountability and responsiveness in informal settlements for equity, and is about promoting social change for improved health and wellbeing with communities and people living and working within urban informal spaces.

This episodes guests:

Bachera Aktar

Assistant Director, The Centre of Excellence for Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (CGSRHR); and PhD student

A public health researcher and academic with more than 13 years of experience of implementing community-based public health interventions and research in Bangladesh. An advocate of community/people-centric health interventions. The areas of her research interest and work include community-based participatory research, action research, health systems research, health and gender equity, socio-political determinants of health, and humanitarian health systems. Bachera works with marginalised communities living in informal urban settlements and humanitarian settings.  

Relevant information sources:

Google Scholar - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ckDgGNcAAAAJ&hl=en  

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bachera-aktar-bd/  

ORCID: Bachera Aktar (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0242-1792) 

ARISE: www.ariseconsortium.org  

BRAC University - https://www.bracu.ac.bd/about/people/bachera-aktar 

Samuel Saidu

Currently, Samuel works on a project that is multi-country and focused on residents of informal settlements. In Sierra Leone, Samuel's project works within 3 communities where the research aims are to provide empowerment opportunities to community residents based on data-driven development.  

Samuel works with co-researchers (community residents who are now assistants to the research team) and are capacitated based on their various levels of education. They are involved in designing the study/research, data collection, analysis of data, and dissemination.  

The community people are the centre of the research in the sense that they are part of the research and play a key role at all levels. It is critical to know that the community people are part of the research team but are also participants.  

Relevant information sources:

ARISE: https://www.ariseconsortium.org/news-events/ 

IDS: https://bulletin.ids.ac.uk/index.php/idsbo/article/view/3119 

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@samuelsaidu0  @AktarBachera @ARISEHub @UKRI_News @BRACJPGSPH @BRACUniversity @COMAHS_USL