Derrick Ssewanyana
Supervisors
Prof. Amina Abubakar
Prof. Amina Abubakar
Email : AAbubakar@kemri-wellcome.org Amina is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Public Health at Pwani University, Kenya and a Research Fellow at the Kenya Medical Research Institute/Wellcome Trust Research Programme. She co-leads the Neuroscience research group at KEMRI-WTRP. She is also an honorary fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, UK. She holds the prestigious MRC/DfiD African Research Leaders award. In 2016, she was awarded the Royal Society Pfizer Award. Her main interests are in the study of developmental delays and impairments among children exposed to various health problems such as HIV, malnutrition and malaria. A focus in her work is the development of culturally appropriate strategies for identifying, monitoring and rehabilitating at-risk children. Prof Abubakar has been instrumental in developing various culturally appropriate measures of child development that have been used in many African countries. In addition, she is also interested in examining the prevalence of and risk factors for neurodevelopmental disorders, specifically ASD, within the African context. Prof. Abubakar has given guest lectures, and workshops largely focusing on cross-cultural research methods in various countries, including Cameroon, Germany, Indonesia, Kenya, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, and Spain. She has (co)-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. She has served on technical working groups, and forums for various international organizations including the World Health Organization, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (USA), Save the Children, and Autism Speaks. She is actively involved in capacity building for African Scientists; she has supervised Postgraduate Diploma, Masters and PhD students in Kenya. She has also supervised PhD students from South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.
Prof. Charles Newton
Charles Newton qualified from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, with postgraduate training in Paediatrics in Manchester and London, United Kingdom. As a lecturer at University of Oxford, he went to Kilifi Kenya in 1989, to help set up a unit to study severe malaria in African children. Thereafter he spent 2 years as a Post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, USA; studying mechanisms of brain damage in central nervous system infections. He completed his training in Paediatric Neurology at Great Ormond Street Hospital, UK. In 1998 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellowship at University College London, to return to Kilifi, to study CNS infections in children. He conducts research on CNS infections in children; epidemiological studies of epilepsy and neurological impairment; tetanus, jaundice and sepsis in neonates. He is particularly interested in behavioural comorbidity of neurological conditions in children. In 2011 he took up a professorship in Psychiatry at the University of Oxford to conduct studies of Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Epilepsy in Africa and Autism in the United Kingdom and Lithuania
Mentors
Dr. Dorcas Kamuya
Dr. Dorcas Kamuya
Affilliation(s):
Dorcas is a post-doctoral Researcher in Ethics and Community Engagement on the Global Bioethics Network at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford. She is primarily based at the KEMRI Wellcome Trust (KWTRP), Kenya and works across the UK and the five Wellcome Trust’s Major Overseas Programmes (MOPs) in Kenya, Thailand, Malawi, Vietnam, and South Africa. Her roles include facilitating the strategic development of community engagement activities at KWTRP; coordinating Global Bioethics Network activities aimed at sharing of expertise in community engagement across the MOPs; and developing and leading a research programme around the evaluation of community engagement. Her research interests include ethical implications of community engagement processes in international collaborative research in developing countries; exploring drivers of CE in health research; and ethical and practical challenges and dilemmas for interface research staff. Dorcas’s previous role, as the Community Liaison Manager, included setting-up mechanisms for engaging with over 260,000 residents often involved in health research, strengthening collaborative partnerships between KWTRP and key health stakeholders, providing support to research interface staff (especially fieldworkers), and carrying our action research around these activities. Dorcas has a PhD from the Open University, UK; a Masters in Public Health (health promotion) from London School of Hygiene and Tropical, and a BSc. in Agricultural Economics from Egerton University, Kenya.
Derrick is Public Health enthusiast who is currently pursuing his PhD studies in Adolescent Health at Utrecht University, Netherlands. He previously graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Health Science from Makerere University in Uganda and a M.Sc. Public Health from University of Southern Denmark.
His current PhD research is focused on defining the forms, patterns and underlying factors for health risk behavior of adolescents in low resource settings at the Kenyan Coast. His special focus is to examine these forms of behavior among adolescents infected or affected by HIV/AIDS at the Kenyan coast. His research will help to adapt culturally appropriate tools for measuring health risk behavior among adolescents. It will also fill important knowledge gaps for example on the impact of HIV associated executive functioning deficits and other potential determinants of risky behavior among HIV infected and affected adolescents. This shall benefit interventions and policy in the field of HIV care and management and adolescent health in general.
Derrick has previously worked on projects in water and sanitation, humanitarian healthcare, sexual health and substance abuse management programs in East Africa and Europe. Derrick enjoys sports, nature, charity drives and music.
Publications
- Perspectives on underlying factors for unhealthy diet and sedentary lifestyle of adolescents at a Kenyan coastal setting. Ssewanyana, D., Abubakar, A., Van Baar, A., Mwangala, P. N., & Newton, C. R. (2018). Frontiers in Public Health, 6,11 doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2018.00011
- Health Risk Behaviour among Adolescents Living with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Ssewanyana, D., Mwangala, P. N., van Baar, A., Newton, C. R., & Abubakar, A. (2018). BioMed Research International.
- Health risk behavior among chronically ill adolescents: a systematic review of assessment tools. Ssewanyana, D., Nyongesa, M. K., Baar, A., Newton, C. R., & Abubakar, A. (2017). Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 11(1), 32.
- Young people’s and stakeholders’ perspectives of adolescent sexual risk behavior in Kilifi County, Kenya: A qualitative study. Ssewanyana, D., Mwangala, P. N., Marsh, V., Jao, I., van Baar, A., Newton, C. R., & Abubakar, A. (2017). Journal of Health Psychology, 23(2):188-205. doi: 1359105317736783.
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