EV4GH around the globe

I am a health systems researcher based in Durban, South Africa. I am a senior researcher at the Centre for Rural Health, University of KwaZulu-Natal, and a research fellow at the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Free State. My principal areas of focus are on the integration of mental health services into primary and community levels of care, and the politics and power within which these processes are embedded. I am presently involved in the Southern African Consortium for Mental Health Integration (S-MhINT; NIMH); EvideNce led co-created HeAlth systems for interventioNs for MLTC-M care (ENHANCE; NIHR); and in the development of public mental health screening and referral systems for child and adolescent mental health in rural KwaZulu-Natal.

Charles Ssemugabo is a Research Associate and doctoral student in the Department of Disease Control and Environmental Health at Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH). Charles has varied research interests in areas of environmental risk assessment for non-communicable diseases integrating epidemiology with high quality exposure assessment. In fact, for his PhD, he is looking exposure to pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables and associated health risks among consumers in Uganda. Charles also has interest health systems and policy research where he has worked majorly on community health systems working with community health workers in Uganda especially with strengthening their training, supervision and motivation; gender and ethics in healthy system. Charles has also worked on understanding the burden of unintentional among children and design and implementation of prevention strategies. He has also been involved research on water, sanitation and hygiene in rural and urban communities. The other area of work for Charles is noncommunicable diseases where he has been involved in their surveillance using mobile phones as well as understand perspectives of policy actors on their prevention and control. Charles has over 25 publications in peer reviewed journals and has presented in and/or attended over 20 national and international conferences. He is a consortium for Advanced Research Training in African PhD fellow and a Fogarty Global Health Low and Middle Income Country Doctoral Trainee. Besides research, Charles is involved in teaching on the Bachelors of Environmental Health Sciences (BEHS), Master of Public Health (MPH), Master of Public Health – Disaster Management programs (MPH-DM), and Master of Health Informatics (MHI) for the past 8 years (Since 2014). Charles is also involved with student supervision and mentorship. He has to-date supervised 13 Master students’ dissertations and 12 undergraduate dissertations.