Sustainable Development for HIV Health Seminar Series

We host a bi-weekly Sustainable Development for HIV Health (SD4H) seminar via zoom for Maseno University graduate students. The course is led by the Fellowship Directors (Drs. Bukusi, Ndunyu, Weiser, and Cohen) and features guest lectures by Maseno University, KEMRI and UCGHI faculty, and Kenyan SD4H researchers. The SD4H seminar combines lectures, participatory discussions, and student presentations focusing on the SD4H core competencies.

One Health - Extreme Weather Events and Antibiotic Resistance

October 5, 2023

Dr. Peter Omemo is a lecturer in the Department of Public Health at Maseno University- Kenya. Dr. Omemo has diverse professional experiences, gained throughout 22+ years in Veterinary and Public Health departments in Kenya. He also has over 10 years’ teaching experience as a public health lecturer at the university level. Dr Omemo’s primary research interests evolve round application of transdisciplinary approaches in the study of population health. Especially application of One health approach and GIS in Population health research. He is currently committed to conducting a One Health study to assess the impact of extreme weather events on the health of Persons living with HIV and Antibiotic Use at the human–animal interface in the Lake Victoria Basin, Kenya.

Qualitative Research - part 2

September 21, 2023

Abigail M. Hatcher is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and an honorary Associate Professor at the School of Public Health of the University of the Witwatersrand. She explores causal links from social determinants (intimate partner violence, poverty, and food insecurity) to mental and physical health. Hatcher examines the efficacy of social interventions through randomized control trials and longitudinal qualitative research and is an editorial board member of AIDS and an associate editor at BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Presentation Literacy

September 7, 2023

Dr. Elizabeth Bukusi is Senior Principal Clinical Research Scientist at KEMRI and Co-Director Research Care Training Program. In addition to her experience conducting socio-behavioral and biomedical research and providing leadership and support for HIV care, she has a strong interest in research and clinical ethics. Dr. Bukusi also focuses on mentoring and training health care and research personnel to enhance local and international capacity.

Wildfire Smoke and Preterm Birth

August 24, 2023

Dr. Amy Padula studies the effects of ambient air pollution during pregnancy on adverse birth outcomes including preterm birth, low birth weight and birth defects. The projects have expanded to evaluate social factors including neighborhood socioeconomic status and acculturation and comorbidities including diabetes and hypertension during pregnancy. More recently, she investigated interactions between biotransformation enzymes gene variants and air pollution and risk of congenital anomalies. She is a co-investigator of the NIH’s Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) study at UCSF. This study is currently recruiting pregnant women to examine the relationship between endocrine disrupting chemicals and psychosocial stress during pregnancy and their effects on adverse birth and child health outcomes.

August 10, 2023

Jackie Odhiambo, MSc is a Public Health and Health Systems Researcher. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Public Health and is a SD4H PhD Fellow at Maseno University. She is also the Founder and Executive Director of Nyanam Widows Rising. Nyanam (the name means “Daughter of the Lake”) Widows Rising provides widows in the Lake Victoria region with leadership education, personal and professional development. Founded in 2017, Nyanam helps widows begin micro-enterprises and small businesses and educates widows about property rights, helping them reclaim what’s theirs. They have built homes for widows whose safety was threatened, and nearly 1,000 children have benefitted from Nyanam youth camps and mentorship programs. Hundreds of widows gather for monthly meetings providing them with a sense of community.

The Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales: A new way to think about & measure water insecurity

June 29, 2023

Sera Young is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Global Health Studies at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. She has dedicated her career to understanding how mothers, especially in low-resource settings, cope to preserve their health and that of their families. Methodologically, she draws on her training in medical anthropology (MA, University of Amsterdam) and international nutrition (PhD, Cornell University) to take a biocultural approach to improving maternal and child health. Professor Young’s current research is focused on quantifying human experiences with problems with water, and unpacking their consequences for nutrition, health, and well-being (www.WISEscales.org). Dr. Young led a large multi-disciplinary team to develop the first cross-culturally equivalent way of measuring water access and use at the household and individual levels. The Water Insecurity Experiences Scales have been used by 100+ organizations in at least 50 countries. She has co-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications; been funded by NIH, NSF, USAID; and awards include the Margaret Mead Award for her book, Craving Earth, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship.

Water Insecurity and Health

June 15, 2023

Dr. Jerry Nutor is an assistant professor at University of California, San Francisco. Jerry is passionate about promoting collaboration between scholars and researchers working in Africa and North America. He is the founder and secretary general of Africa Interdisciplinary Health Conference (AfIHC). He founded AfIHC to create a platform for the various healthcare providers in both clinical and academic/research settings to meet and discuss their research findings to promote evidence-based practices related to the health sector in Africa. Jerry’s research interests are in global health, specifically, in maternal and child health and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. He is also interested in understanding the impact of environmental, social and economic factors on the health of women and children with particular concern with HIV/AIDS in low resources countries and minority populations in the United States.

The Sustainable Development Domain in Competencies for Global Health Research and Education

April 18, 2023

Oladele (Dele) A Ogunseitan holds the University of California Presidential Chair at University of California Irvine where he is Professor and served for more than a decade as founding chair of the Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention. He is a Visiting Professor at the Center for Innovation in Global Health, Stanford University. Dele leads the Training and Empowerment objective for USAID’s One Health Workforce-Next Generation project in 17 countries across Africa and Southeast Asia. He directs the education center for the University of California Global Health Institute; co-chairs the education pillar for the UC Center for Climate, Health, and Equity; and directs workforce development for the NIH-funded Institute for Clinical and Translational Science. He chairs the competency subcommittee for the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.

Environmental Racism and Climate Change

May 4, 2024

Orlando Harris is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health Systems at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also a researcher that uses community-based participatory research methods both in the United States and the Caribbean where he leverages multi-methods data to inform culturally relevant interventions that improves the lives of vulnerable sexual and gender minorities. He has also spent the past several years researching factors that contribute to poor health among Caribbean sexual and gender minorities. Additionally, he has a unique focus on researching the context of violence that has shaped the lives of marginalized people in the United States and the Caribbean.

Climate Change and Health

April 20, 2023

Dr. Sheri Weiser is a Professor of Medicine and internist at UCSF’s Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Her research focuses on the impact of food insecurity and other social and structural factors on treatment outcomes for HIV and other chronic diseases. Dr. Weiser also evaluates sustainable food insecurity interventions to improve health outcomes in domestic and international settings.

Wildfires, Climate Change and Health

April 6, 2023

Dr. Gina Solomon is a Principal Investigator at the Public Health Institute, a global non-profit research and leadership organization that builds public health programs, policies and practices. At PHI she directs the Achieving Resilient Communities (ARC) project to anticipate, prevent and respond to climate change in the most impacted communities in California. She is also a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). From 2012-2018, Dr. Solomon served as the Deputy Secretary for Science and Health at the California Environmental Protection Agency. She was the director of the occupational and environmental medicine residency program at UCSF from 2008-2012, and the co-director of the UCSF Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit from 2003-2008; she was also a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council from 1996-2012.

Methods for truthful and engaging display of public health data

March 23, 2023

Dr. Rain Mocello is a lecturer at UC Berkeley and a data analyst at UCSF, focusing on HIV prevention and care research in East Africa and Brazil. She teaches Data Visualization for Public Health for the Masters in Public Health program at UC Berkeley. Her course covers the theory of good graphical design, how to pair data with appropriate visualizations, and how to produce these graphics using R.

Time Management

March 9, 2023

Dr. Elizabeth Bukusi is Senior Principal Clinical Research Scientist at KEMRI and Co-Director Research Care Training Program. In addition to her experience conducting socio-behavioral and biomedical research and providing leadership and support for HIV care, she has a strong interest in research and clinical ethics. Dr. Bukusi also focuses on mentoring and training health care and research personnel to enhance local and international capacity.

Developing an Interview Guide, Interviewing, Coding and Analysis

Feb 23, 2022

Abigail M. Hatcher is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and an honorary Associate Professor at the School of Public Health of the University of the Witwatersrand. She explores causal links from social determinants (intimate partner violence, poverty, and food insecurity) to mental and physical health. Hatcher examines the efficacy of social interventions through randomized control trials and longitudinal qualitative research and is an editorial board member of AIDS and an associate editor at BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Communication: Interpersonal Communication and Public Speaking

Feb 9, 2023

Dr. Elizabeth Bukusi is Senior Principal Clinical Research Scientist at KEMRI and Co-Director Research Care Training Program. In addition to her experience conducting socio-behavioral and biomedical research and providing leadership and support for HIV care, she has a strong interest in research and clinical ethics. Dr. Bukusi also focuses on mentoring and training health care and research personnel to enhance local and international capacity.

Mental and Physical Sustainability in Academia

January 26, 2023

Nicholas Outa is a a PhD student at Maseno University working on the potential of Freshwater Integrated Multitrophic Aquaculture (FIMTA) in Lake Victoria to help reduce the negative environmental impacts of Cage aquaculture in the lake. I am also a Trainer on Scientific Writing and Publishing at TCC-Africa. I am interested in Scientific Communication, Aquaculture Research, Fisheries, Teaching and Community service.

SMART DAPPER: Implementation Research for Mental Health Care in Kisumu, Kenya

January 12, 2023

Susan M. Meffert M.D., M.P.H. is a Professor in the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Psychiatry and UCSF Global Health Sciences Faculty Affiliate. Dr. Meffert has worked to address mental health care needs for populations in low-and-middle-income countries since 1997 through clinical and implementation science research. She has been working in Kisumu, Kenya since 2010.

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