Mary is a highly accomplished professional as the Founder Director of the African Institute for Health and Development (AIHD), Mary has been instrumental in promoting health promotion and education in Kenya and beyond.

Prior to founding the AIHD, Mary worked for several prominent organizations, including the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), Population Council, and African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). She is also an Executive Board Member of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE), as well as a member of the Steering Committee for NCDI Poverty Network. She also chairs the Advocacy Communication and Social Mobilization Technical Working Group for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in the Ministry of Health (MoH) and holds a similar position for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Kenya.

Mary is a prolific author, having published numerous articles and papers on topics ranging from gender, gender-based violence (GBV), reproductive and child health to NTDs and NCDs, as well as poverty. She is also an Adjunct Faculty Member of Strathmore University in Nairobi. Mary holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (1994) and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Nairobi (1989).

Nadine is a medical anthropologist whose research has focused on HIV/AIDS, Islam, ethics and medical governance, collective action, sexual practice, and reproductive health. She has done ethnographic work in Tanzania and South Sudan and recently worked with a large population-based study on HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe, where she completed a study on rapid HIV testing. She was also working on a project on underlying reasons for ethnic disparities in maternal health outcomes. Before joining the United Kingdom Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK-PHRST) at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSTMH), she taught anthropology at the University of Roehampton, development studies at the University of Leeds, and held research fellowships at Bradford University and the University of Oxford.

Deborah Ekusai-Sebatta is a Social Scientist who works at the Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration. She is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in bioethics, in collaboration with John’s Hopkins University, while also holding a master’s degree in social sector planning and management from Makerere University. As part of her work at the Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration, Deborah is involved in designing a behavior change intervention for health workers, based on the findings of an analysis that she was actively engaged in.

Luisa Enria is Assistant Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her research focuses on ethnographic approaches to conflict, humanitarian interventions, and global health particularly in West Africa. In 2015 she was deployed as an anthropologist to support the response to the West African Ebola outbreak, carrying out 14 months of fieldwork in Northern Sierra Leone to research community experiences of the epidemic and its response, and in particular, perspectives on the Ebola vaccine trials. Since then, her work has focused on outbreak preparedness and response, community engagement with clinical research and the politics of emergency and crisis management. Alongside this work, she has developed applied social science trainings for a range of audiences, including for community health workers to conduct research on vaccine hesitancy and, more recently, local experiences of COVID-19.

I am a medical anthropologist, conducting research on gender, violence (gender-based and structural), and epidemics (HIV, Ebola and COVID-19). I lead a number of anthropological studies on vaccine deployment and the social aspects of epidemics. I also am on the executive committee and work-package lead for the ALERRT consortium, where I conduct research on community engagement for biomedical research for epidemics across sub-Saharan Africa. I also lead on research projects which focus on the prevention of intimate partner violence in Africa, which has public and global health implications. Alongside a number of social science studies on intimate partner violence in sub-Saharan Africa, I am PI and coordinator for a large-scale community based IPV prevention trial in Tanzania. Through this work I have an in-depth knowledge of global health policy and systems. I bring anthropological expertise to multi-disciplinary public health inventions (including health systems research, clinical trials, or violence prevention interventions), as well exploring the impact of these interventions on people and their communities. Much of my research is informing policy around epidemic preparedness and the prevention of intimate partner violence. I sit on a number of steering committees to influence policy and research agendas in these fields

Dr Leesa Lin is a Behavioural and Communication Scientist whose research has centred around emergency risk communications, evaluation of public health interventions, assessment of public health systems’ emergency preparedness and response, and social and behavioural determinants of health during large-scale public health emergencies, including pandemics and acute infectious disease outbreaks, earthquakes, water crises, and antibiotic/antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Employing a mixed-methods approach, she specialises in developing and evaluating interventions for behavioural change that address critical public health issues including child health and development, mental health, and vaccine uptake. Dr Lin holds a PhD in Implementation Science, Behavioural and Decision Sciences, and Social Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, a MSc in Global Health and Population from the Harvard School of Public Health, and a BA in Psychology and Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia.

I am a social psychologist, with a PhD in Public health. Working at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil, I am a public health researcher at the National School of Public Health, Coordinator of Zika Social Sciences Network since 2016, and also Coordinator of Social Impacts of COVID-19 at Fiocruz COVID Observatory. I am interested in qualitative studies, Social Studies of Sciences (STS), Public Health Emergencies in LMICs and Global Health entanglements.

Ma. Mercedes G. Planta is Associate Professor of History at the Department of History and Faculty Affiliate of the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, Diliman. Her work focuses on the history of medicine and colonial Southeast Asia. She is currently Deputy Editor of the Regional Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (RJSEAS), an international, peer-reviewed journal that seeks to provide a platform for Southeast Asian scholars based in Southeast Asia to share their research internationally. Her book, Traditional Medicine in the Colonial Philippines, 16th to the 19th Century (2017), was awarded Best Book in Science by the National Book Awards of the Philippines in 2018. In the same year, she was awarded the Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellowship by the American Philosophical Society. In 2019, she was also conferred the title University Scientist of the University of the Philippines System.

Dr Megan Schmidt-Sane is a postdoctoral researcher with the Institute of Development Studies on the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform. She is a medical anthropologist working on social science research, with a focus on epidemic diseases, political economy, community resilience, and urban health, mainly in East Africa and South Asia. Her doctoral dissertation research (funded by the National Science Foundation), focused on the political economy of HIV risk among men in an informal settlement in Kampala, Uganda. In collaboration with colleagues from Makerere University and UNICEF, she co-led research on the social context of Ebola in Uganda’s borderlands during the ongoing 2018-2019 epidemic in the DRC.

My areas of research and interest revolve around working with children, adolescents, and their significant others (parents, teachers, and peers) across all care settings. In particular, my recent research focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of behavioral interventions to improve psychological functioning for individuals in low-and middle-income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I am a physician and public health specialist. My clinical practice and research work has focused on non-communicable diseases (NCDs). As a researcher for an evidence-based medicine and NCDs project, I currently work on evidence synthesis for decision making around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Wiysonge is the Director of Cochrane South Africa at the South African Medical Research Council; an Honorary Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Cape Town (UCT); and an Extraordinary Professor of Global Health at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His previous appointments include Deputy Director of the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care and Professor of Community Health at Stellenbosch University; Chief Research Officer at UCT, South Africa; Chief Research Officer at UNAIDS, Geneva, Switzerland; Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Central Technical Group of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation, Cameroon; and Medical Epidemiologist at the Pasteur Centre of Cameroon. He is a member of various advisory committees in the fields of research, vaccination, and evidence-based policy in Africa and globally. Professor Wiysonge obtained an MD from the University of Yaoundé I Cameroon in 1995, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge UK in 2000, and a PhD from UCT in 2012.