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Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation - Call 5 Funding Committee

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Published: 07 September 2022

Version: 1.0 September 2022

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NIHR Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation (RIGHT) convenes independent committees to assess applications for funding. This document outlines the membership and expertise of the funding committee for RIGHT call 5.

Co-Chairs

NamePositionOrganisationExpertise
Professor Joe (Joseph)
Jarvis (Co-Chair) (Stage 1 Committee Member, Stage 2 Co-Chair)
Professor of Tropical Medicine and International Health London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK and Botswana
Professor Jarvis is an NIHR Global Health Research Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, currently based full time in Gaborone, Botswana, where he works for the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership and leads a programme of research focusing on advanced HIV disease, opportunistic infections, cryptococcal meningitis and other CNS infections, and strategies to rapidly and safely initiate ART in individuals with low CD4 counts.
Professor Ididun Adelekan Professor of Geography. Climate and society, human dimensions of global environmental change, including climate change, vulnerability and resilience. University of Ibadan, Nigeria Professor Ibidun Adelekan is a Professor of Geography at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her research interests span across climate-society interactions and human dimensions of global environmental change, including vulnerability and resilience of human-environment systems to climate change in cities and coastal settlements, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction. She was Coordinating Lead Author, Africa chapter of the IPCC AR6 WGII Report, and a member of the Expert Review Group, Race to Resilience (R2R) campaign of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Professor Nhan Tran (Stage 1 Only)
Head of Safety and Mobility World Health Organisation Professor Nhan Tran holds a PhD in Health Systems and Injury Prevention. He was a science advisor within the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and later as a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University he co-founded the International Injury Research Unit. He joined the WHO in 2011 as the Manager of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research. In October 2017 he assumed his current role as the Head of Safety and Mobility.

Funding Committee

NamePositionOrganisationExpertise
Dr Laura Anselmi Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics University of Manchester, UK Laura has a background in Economics and Development Economics and pursued a PhD in Health Economics after working in planning at the Ministry of Health in Mozambique for over five-years. Her research focuses on the financing and organisation of public health systems. She has a specific expertise in methods for the equitable allocation of resources across areas, the analysis of equity in health and health care, and the evaluation of health policy and their mechanisms, with attention to the role of local health systems. She works across different settings. She is a co-convenor of the Special Interest group on financing for Universal Health Coverage of the international Health Economics Association (iHEA) and works with various local, national and international health organisations.
Dr Lucia D’Ambruoso Senior Lecturer in Global Public Health Aberdeen Centre for Health Data Science, School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition, University of Aberdeen, UK Dr D’Ambruoso is a social scientist and health policy and systems researcher interested in service organisation and delivery, the social determinants of health, and participatory theory and method. She works mainly with: Verbal Autopsy for routine mortality surveillance, and Participatory Action Research to shift power towards those most directly affected to understand and transform. I am also concerned with uptake of research, and the determinants of uptake. She has worked internationally for 20 years within universities, research agencies and networks, UN organisations, and in governments at different levels. My research is supported by research councils and philanthropic organisations. I lead a Global Challenges Research Fund programme strengthening health systems in rural South Africa through people-centred and comprehensive primary care approaches. She teaches at postgraduate level on health systems and policy, global health and development, and qualitative methods. She is deputy director of the Centre for Global Development at the University of Aberdeen, Honorary Senior Researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Extraordinary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and Global Affiliate of the Umeå Centre for Global Health Research, Umeå University, Sweden. She also serves on the Editorial Board of Global Health Action.
Dr Walter Flores
(Stage 2 Only)
Principal Advisor CEGSS, Guatemala A social scientist and human rights advocate with over 25 years of professional experience. He holds a PhD in Health Systems and a Masters of Community Health from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK. Dr. Flores’ professional work has been carried-out in more than 30 countries from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. His areas of expertise are participatory research, community engagement and involvement in health research, health equity, transparency and accountability, and democratic governance of public policies. Dr. Flores was founder and director of Center for the Study of Equity and Governance in Health Systems (CEGSS), an action-research organisation based in Guatemala, aiming to improve access to healthcare services for indigenous and other marginalised populations. Dr Flores has been a consultant for the European Union and USAID in the area of health systems and programs evaluation. Dr. Flores has served as expert advisor for both the World Health Organization and the Pan-American Health Organization on different initiatives and task forces such as: Promoting Social Participation in Health Systems; A Framework to measuring and monitoring Global Child Obesity Goals; Roadmap to Universal Health Coverage; Ethical guidelines for Universal Health Coverage.
Professor Carrol Gamble
(Stage 2 Only)
Professor of Medical Statistics University of Liverpool Carrol Gamble is a Professor of Medical Statistics at the University of Liverpool, an NIHR Senior Investigator and Director of the Liverpool Clinical Trials Centre, a clinical trials unit (CTU) registered with the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC).
Carrol’s methodological interests focus on recruitment and retention in clinical trials and consent where there is an urgent need to treat. Her applied research focuses on the design and conduct of clinical trials in paediatrics, neurology and surgery.
Carrol is a member of the Trials Methodology Research Partnership Statistical Analysis and Health Informatics Working Groups and co-chairs the Data Sharing sub group.
Carrol chaired the UK network of statisticians in UKCRC registered Clinical Trials Units for 10 years, was a member of the UKCRC registered CTU group on data sharing and is now deputy Chair for the Policy Group.
Dr Adugna Woyessa Gemeda Senior Researcher and Epidemiologist Ethiopian Public Health Institute, Ethiopia Adugna Woyessa, senior public health researcher and epidemiologist, working for the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He was research director for Bacterial Parasitic and Zoonotic Diseases Research, 2014-2017, led generating national evidence and mapping disease risk for Ethiopia that contributed to the present strong partnership. Adugna contributed to filling the knowledge gap in epidemiology of malaria and designed methods for measuring highland malaria and incorporating climate information in malaria surveillance in Ethiopia. Adugna also advanced collaboration among health and climate professionals through capacity building and improving the use of climate information for public health action. He is Lead Author to the Sixth Assessment Report of IPCC Working Group II: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability Africa Region Chapter 9 and supported the communication of findings to the decision-makers and development partners using various media outlets. Adugna is currently leading assessment of health impacts of seasonal weather forecasts and climate change in Ethiopia and the Greater Horn of Africa to inform contingency planning. Adugna gave technical support to Ethiopia's Ministry of Health in the malaria control program before joining EPHI. Adugna studied Biology for his undergraduate and Medical Public Health for his PhD.
Professor Jane Goudge Professor at the Centre for Health Policy Centre for Health Policy, School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa Jane Goudge, Professor at the Centre for Health Policy, Wits School of Public Health, has been conducting research in the field of health systems and policy research for over 20 years. She has a PhD in development economics from London University. Key themes of her work include barriers to access to care, inequities in the financing of health care, strategies to improve universal coverage and implementation of national health insurance in South Africa. Major recent themes in her work include the development of a district learning site to support an organisational change, the role of community health workers in bridging the gap between households and the health system, supporting the provision of integrated chronic care, and retention in care of adults with chronic illnesses. This has included a pragmatic RCT to examine the effect of shifting some tasks of chronic disease management, particularly hypertension, to lay health workers, and an implementation study assessing the benefits of supportive supervision on household coverage by the national CHW (WBOT) programme. She is the local lead of the SARChI programme at the Centre. Recent themes under this programme include evidence reviews on LMIC experience of strategic purchasing, strategies to strengthen community-based mental health care, as well as primary research on public financial management and the functioning of public hospitals.
Professor Liz (Elizabeth) Grant Assistant Principal University of Edinburgh and Professor of Global Health and Development University of Edinburgh, UK Research expertise in planetary health, compassion as a value base of the Sustainable Development Goals, and palliative care in a changing climate.
Professor Liz Grant directs the University’s Global Health Academy. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) and the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh, (RCPE) and a Member of the Faculty of Public Health.
Liz is Deputy Director International for the RCPE.
She sits on the Scottish Government NHS Global Citizenship Board, leads the Consortium of Universities for Global Health CUGH Palliative Care Group and sits on the CUGH Research Committee and Planetary Health Group.
Dr Chadarat Hengsadeekul
(Stage 2 Only)
Lecturer, National Institute for Child and Family Development Mahidol University, Thailand Dr. Chadarat has comprehensive experience with managerial tasks in multinational companies. Her competency in business management has been developed through different industries; and this leads her to step in business training. She is able to tailor her skills to meet training audience’s needs. In addition to business field, she has joined programs liked the climate program for Asia environmental cooperation, community safety and public wellbeing, promotion of child safety, injury prevention and childhood wellbeing.
Currently, she is a lecturer at Mahidol University. Her prime courses are related to individual development in the disruptive world. Also, she coaches parents, teachers, child carers on child learning and well-being. She is certain that child well-being is an outcome from a diverse input that can flourish children and makes impactful to all aspects of their life.
With her education in learning innovation, she has developed her skills in designing active learning activities and offered interactive learning models in knowledge sharing forums. Joining public in different contexts makes her aware of creative methods and communication which enables the change of existing patterns. She has experienced working in diverse fields of work from business related, education, and social science.
Professor Rumana Huque Professor in the Department of Economics and Executive Director of the ARK Foundation University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and ARK Foundation, Bangladesh Dr Rumana Huque is a Professor in the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. She specialises in health systems and health economics. She is particularly interested in research and advocacy in the fields of health system strengthening, health care financing, non-communicable disease and multimorbidity. She holds the position of Executive Director at ARK Foundation, Bangladesh, which is a research NGO working in health system strengthening, urban health, mental health and tobacco control, working with a number of development partners and universities in the United Kingdom and North America. She is a member of the faculty of public health (fph), United Kingdom, through distinction. She was the member in the Technical Working Group of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of Bangladesh in developing Health Care Financing Strategy (2012-2032), Strategic Investment Plan (SIP) and Programme Implementation Plan (PIP) of the 4th Health Sector Programme (2017-2022), Annual Programme Reviews (2013, 2019), Amendment of the Tobacco Control Act 2015. She is a visiting Faculty of Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development, University of Leeds, United Kingdom.
Professor Shauib Lwasa
(Stage 2 Only)
Professor of Urban Resilience and Global Development Urban Resilience and Global Development, Uganda Shuaib Lwasa is a Professor of Urban Resilience and Global Development. Shuaib has over 22 years of university teaching and research on urban sustainability formerly at Makerere University where he was a founding coordinator of the Urban Action research Lab. He has worked on interdisciplinary research projects focused on African cities but also in South Asia but also climate change and health among marginalised communities. His publications are in the areas of climate change and health, urban mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, urban environmental management, spatial planning, and disaster risk reduction, urban sustainability. Shuaib was a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC WG III Chapter 8 “Urban Systems and Human Settlements” and Lead Author for the IPCC Special report on Land and Climate Change.
Professor Christopher Millett Professor of Public Health Imperial College London, UK Christopher Millett is Professor of Public Health at Imperial College London. He worked in several research and public health roles before undertaking formal public health training in London. He completed his PhD at Imperial College in 2008 and was awarded a 5-year NIHR Research Professorship in 2014. He is a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health.
Christopher has published studies on a variety of topics, including tobacco control, active travel, nutrition, health system performance and health inequalities. His main research interest is public health policy evaluation, with a particular interest in health inequality impacts. This includes a focus on evaluating strategies to prevent and manage non-communicable diseases in middle income country settings.
Professor Virginia Murray Head of Global Disaster Risk Reduction UK Health Security Agency Virginia Murray is a public health doctor committed to improving health emergency and disaster risk management. She was appointed as Head of Global Disaster Risk Reduction for UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England) in April 2014. She is currently co-chair of the WHO Thematic Platform Health and Disaster Risk Management Research Network, and by working in collaboration with this network, she is one of the editors of the WHO Guidance on Research Methods for Health and Disaster Risk Management, published in October 2021. She is a member of the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) scientific committee and Co-Chair of IRDR’s Disaster Loss Data (DATA) and is currently the Chair of the UNDRR/ISC Hazard Classification and Review Technical Working Group, with the report published in 2020 and the UNDRR-ISC Hazard Information Profiles: Supplement in 2021. She is currently a member of CODATA Executive Committee. She is a member of the UNSDSN TReNDS network and is a visiting/honorary Professor and fellow at several universities.
Professor Fred Nuwaha Professor of Disease Control and Prevention Makerere University, Uganda Professor Nuwaha is a professor of Disease Control and Prevention at Makerere University School of Public Health. He has a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree (MD) from Makerere University; a master’s in public health (MPH) from Leeds University; and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Disease Control from Karolinsika Institutet.
His fields of specialty and research interests include Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), HIV/STIs, TB, and Malaria; with over 110 peer reviewed publications. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) for FibroSCHoT that is evaluating the impact of repeated doses of praziquantel in Schistosomiasis hot spots in Uganda and a co-PI for SPICES-Scaling-up Packages of Interventions for Cardiovascular disease prevention in selected sites in Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, Dr. Nuwaha serves as the chairman for the Ugandan Ministry of Health Expert Committee for Schistosomiasis and Soil Transmitted Helminths, a member of the infectious disease institute scientific review committee and the associate editor for BMC Public Health.
Professor Moffat Nyirenda Professor of Medicine (Global NCDs), NCD Theme Leader London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, MRC/UVRI & LSHTM Uganda Research Unit, Uganda Professor Moffat Nyriendas expertise is: Diabetologist/Endocrinologist; mechanistic understanding of the etiology of chronic NCDs in Africa, including i) investigating the association between early environmental insults and the risk of obesity, diabetes and hypertension in adulthood; ii) using cross-cutting approaches to examine the interactions between chronic infectious diseases and NCDs; Health systems research; Research capacity building in Africa.
Dr Ramesh Poluru Senior Program Officer The INCLEN Trust International, New Delhi, India Ramesh Poluru did his Masters and PhD in Population Studies from
Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, India. His interests and expertise
spans across social demography, statistics, epidemiology, public health and surveillance (reproductive and child health, STIs, HIV/AIDS), impact assessment and vaccine safety.
Dr Poluru has more than two decades of experience in conceptualization,
implementation and monitoring of large scale socio-demographic,
behavioural, biological and operations research studies; analysis and
interpretation of data (primary and secondary), using both qualitative
and quantitative approaches. He has also extensively involved in the
community based studies, action research/operations research, phase-
3 & 4 clinical trials to deliver intervention services from general
population (women and children) to more vulnerable populations
(infants, minority population, high-risk groups - Female sex workers,
MSM, IDU and truckers). Dr Poluru has published about 30 research
papers in peer-reviewed journals/chapters, and co-authored technical
reports of national and international research projects. He has served
and continues to serve as scientific reviewer for over thirty journals and
various international granting agencies for research grants, reports,
conferences, fellowships and nominations for awards. Dr Poluru also
serves as editorial board member of three international journals.
Dr Reginald Quansah Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health University of Ghana, Ghana My research focuses on children and women’s environmental health and, more broadly, assessing environmental exposures and their potential health effects in highly vulnerable populations including mothers, children, low-income/underserved communities, and occupational populations. Specifically, I am interested in assessing the impact of environmental exposures in homes and at schools; and the health impacts of pesticides, indoor biomass, outdoor air pollution, climate change, and chemicals in consumer products on vulnerable populations. I also seek to take my research a step further and design and implement interventions to mitigate environmental exposures and minimise the risk of potential adverse health outcomes.I have experience working in women’s environmental health research and conducting exposure and epidemiologic pesticide and indoor biomass research. I have expertise in methods in systematic review and meta-analysis and have led several international projects in this area including effectiveness of interventions to reduce indoor air pollution and/or improve health in homes using solid fuel in lower and middle income countries; indoor mould exposure and health; arsenic in drinking water and adverse pregnancy outcomes, etc.
Dr Mwemezi Johaiven Rwiza
(Stage 2 Only)
Senior Lecturer, School of Materials, Energy, Water, and Environmental Sciences (MEWES) The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), Arusha, Tanzania Dr. Rwiza holds a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences and Environmental Engineering from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), South Korea. He also holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science from Lund University, Sweden. He studied at the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania, for his Bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Management. Dr. Rwiza’s fields of training and research interest are community-based research; environmental management; circular economy; biomaterial value chain analysis; climate change; societal transformation; appropriate technologies for water treatment; natural resource assessments; research communication; Swahili and native language advocacy; research methods & science communication; energy materials for rural-Africa applications. Dr. Rwiza is part of the global Knowledge for Change (K4C) consortium under the UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education where he serves as a certified mentor in Community-based Participatory Research. He is an Editorial Advisory Board member of the African Journal of Engineering and Environmental Research. Dr. Rwiza also serves as an African Host University coordinator in the Partnership for skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology – Regional Scholarship Innovation Fund (PASET-RSIF), an African Governments-led initiative to strengthen Science, Technology and Engineering capability in sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Flavia Mori Sarti Professor and researcher in Nutrition and Health Economics University of Sao Paulo, Brazil Ph.D. in Nutrition and Health Economics (2003), Bachelor in Economics (1996) and Nutrition (2006) at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil. Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Sao Paulo since 2006. Researcher with focus on economics applied to public policies of nutrition and health, especially on the following subjects: public policy evaluation; human capital formation; health promotion; primary health care; health systems management; and complex systems applied to economics, nutrition and public health. Research topics of interest include: health technology assessment, public policies in nutrition and health, food production and consumption patterns, social network analysis applied to food systems and health systems, agent-based models in economics, nutrition, and public health. Published 7 books, 28 book chapters and 86 papers in peer reviewed journals with 633 citations (Web of Science), and 183 studies in peer reviewed journals and scientific conferences with 2,234 citations (Google Scholar). Experience in coordination of research in social determinants of health, universal health care coverage, socioeconomic inequality in health, economics of food systems, cost-effectiveness analysis applied to initiatives in nutrition and public health, estimation of health care costs, and complex systems techniques applied to economics and health.
Dr Sree Sucharitha Tirukkovalluri
(Stage 2 Only)
Distinguished Adjunct Faculty-Dept Research Panimalar Medical Dr. Sree T.Sucharitha, M.D currently Distinguished Adjunct Faculty in Department of Research at premier medical College and Hospital Chennai, India holds Fellowship in HIV Medicine and in Asian Human Rights and Drug Policy.
She is the Founder-CEO of Kairos Kinetic, a biotech Startup developing biomarker early detection kit for oral Cancer.
Won Best paper awards for her research. She is the Founding-Director of AHRER-Association for Harm Reduction Education and Research, a first-ever registered medical professionals’ body in India for increasing the public awareness of harms resulting due to various human behaviours associated with tobacco consumption, narcotics, alcohol, and obesity.
She is partnering with Marise Foundation to improve awareness on Cyber Safety by sensitising students in Schools and Colleges.
Professor Rod Taylor Professor of Population Health Research, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit & Robertson Centre for Biostatistics, School of Health and Well Being, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, UK Rod Taylor, MSc, PhD is Professor of Population Health Research, University of Glasgow. He is an Honorary Professor of Health Services Research University of Exeter Medical School, Exeter, UK Adjunct Professor at National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen. His former academic appointments include the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Universities of Birmingham and Glasgow and he was first Director of Technology Appraisals at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
He has published over 450 peer review articles in the field of health services research and health technology assessment and H-index of 79. Rod’s main research interests include development and evaluation of secondary prevention and rehabilitation strategies for heart disease, clinical trial design methodology, use of surrogate outcomes in clinical trials and reimbursement health care policy, and comparative effectiveness research for evaluation of medical devices. He is currently co-Chief Investigator for the following ongoing NIHR and MRC funded studies: REACH-HFpEF trial, SCOT:REACH-HF study, and development of CONSORT and SPIRIT extensions for surrogate endpoints, and is the Director for the Cardiac Rehabilitation Cochrane Review Centre. His postgraduate qualifications include PhD Clinical Physiology (Glasgow), MSc in Medical Statistics (London) and Postgrad. Dip. Health Economics (Aberdeen).
Dr Cathryn Cecelia Tonne Associate Professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Spain Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Spain Cathryn Tonne, Associate Professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, is an environmental epidemiologist focusing on the health effects of air pollution from traffic and household sources and their links with sustainable development. Her research has investigated exposure patterns and health effects of air pollution in high- as well as low- and middle-income countries and the health co-benefits of climate change mitigation via air pollution. She leads the working group focused on mitigation actions and health co-benefits for the Lancet Countdown for Health and Climate Change in Europe and is a member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Air Pollution and Health. She led the European Research Council funded Cardiovascular Health effects of Air pollution in Telangana, India and is coordinator of a major new Horizon Europe project focused on climate change and health. She has held several competitive personal fellowships from funders in the US, UK, and Spain.
Professor Jo Wilmshurst Head of Paediatric Neurology organisation Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, University of Cape Town, South Africa Professor Wilmshurst is a paediatric neurology specialist in a service providing care for children across primary to quaternary levels, for common and high burden neurological diseases in resource poor settings, as well as rare and complex disorders. She has international collaborations to improve care for children with neurological disorders, especially with ICNA and ILAE. She directs a training program (APFP) for health practitioners from African countries to develop specialised skills in paediatric disciplines.