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Dr Sima Berendes

Assistant Professor

United Kingdom

Sima Berendes is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health. She joined LSHTM as a Research Fellow in 2019. As a member of the Intervention Design and Evaluation Group she supported the work on the Safetxt trial, an NIHR-funded trial of a safer sex intervention delivered by mobile phone. She also co-organised a series of pan-European and local webinars by the Vaccine Confidence Project. Sima has been Principal Investigator of the VIP-IDEAL study, a qualitative study on vaccination in pregnancy, funded by a Wellcome ISSF pump priming grant and Co-Investigator on the NIHR-funded VIP study to develop a complex intervention to increase the uptake of maternal vaccinations. Since 2023, Sima has been working in the Clinical Trials Unit Global Health Trials Group in the areas of maternal health and menstrual health and wellbeing. She is Principal Investigator of the WOMAN-3 trial, an international, multi-centre trial in Nigeria, Tanzania and Pakistan among menstruating women with anaemia.

Sima has a medical and public health background with more than ten years of clinical, research, teaching, and charitable work experience in Germany, France, the US, UK, Burkina Faso, Malawi, Libya and other countries.

After obtaining her medical research doctorate at the University of Freiburg in Germany and her MPH degree at Johns Hopkins University in the USA, Sima worked for two years as a study physician and coordinator of HIV/AIDS-related clinical trials at the College of Medicine/ Johns Hopkins University Research project in Blantyre in Malawi.

She then moved to the UK, where she joined the International Public Health Department at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM). At LSTM her research included identifying evidence for the comparative quality of private versus public health care and the effectiveness of strategies to improve the quality of care in low- and middle-income countries. Sima was also involved in an EU-funded project to support the Ministry of Health in Libya to develop its first National HIV/AIDS strategy. This included the conduct of biological and behavioural surveillance surveys among key populations in Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya, using the method of respondent-driven sampling. Sima contributed to research using lot-quality assurance sampling to assess the coverage and quality of health care services by different providers at national and sub-national levels in Nigeria, Uganda and South-Sudan.

Prior to joining LSHTM, Sima also supported the development of a distance learning course in Global Health at Imperial College London, and assisted SESH Global (Social Entrepreneurship to Spur Health) in the conduct of a systematic review and linked Crowdsourcing For Health project on decentralised diagnostic testing for infectious diseases.

Affiliations

Department of Medical Statistics
Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health

Teaching

Sima is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She is teaching on several modules/courses/programmes, including:

  • Basic Epidemiology
  • Fundamentals of Epidemiology
  • Essentials of Clinical Trials
  • Global dimensions of sexual and reproductive health
  • MSc student tutoring/supervision for MSc in Public Health for Development and MSc Global Mental Health

 

 

Research

  • Public Health
  • Sexual, reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health
  • Maternal vaccination
  • Menstrual health and anaemia
  • Mixed-methods research, randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews, qualitative research, participant & public involvement, crowdsourcing
Research Area
Public health
Complex interventions
Mixed methods research
Global health
Maternal health
Adolescent health
Randomised controlled trials
Qualitative research
Clinical drug trials
Disease and Health Conditions
Infectious diseases
Anaemia
Country
United Kingdom
Nigeria
Tanzania
Pakistan
Malawi
Region
Europe & Central Asia (all income levels)
South Asia
Middle East & North Africa (all income levels)
Sub-Saharan Africa (developing only)

Selected Publications

Interventions to increase vaccination against COVID-19, influenza and pertussis during pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Razai, MS; Mansour, R; Goldsmith, L; Freeman, S; Mason-Apps, C; Ravindran, P; Kooner, P; BERENDES, S; Morris, J; Majeed, A; Ussher, M; Hargreaves, S; Oakeshott, P;
2023
Journal of travel medicine
"Figuring stuff out myself" - a qualitative study on maternal vaccination in socially and ethnically diverse areas in England.
BERENDES, S; MOUNIER-JACK, S; OJO-AROMOKUDU, O; IVORY, A; TUCKER, JD; LARSON, HJ; FREE, C;
2023
BMC public health
Behavioural intervention to reduce sexually transmitted infections in people aged 16–24 years in the UK: the safetxt RCT
FREE, C; PALMER, MJ; Potter, K; MCCARTHY, OL; Jerome, L; BERENDES, S; Gubijev, A; Knight, M; JAMAL, Z; Dhaliwal, F; CARPENTER, JR; Morris, TP; EDWARDS, P; FRENCH, R; Macgregor, L; Turner, KM E; Baraitser, P; HICKSON, FC I; WELLINGS, K; ROBERTS, I; Bailey, JV; Hart, G; Michie, S; CLAYTON, T; DEVRIES, K;
2023
Public health research
A systematic review of randomised controlled trials of the effects of digital health interventions on postpartum contraception use.
Sze, YY; BERENDES, S; Russel, S; Bellam, L; SMITH, C; Cameron, S; FREE, CJ;
2022
BMJ sexual & reproductive health
Effectiveness of a behavioural intervention delivered by text messages (safetxt) on sexually transmitted reinfections in people aged 16-24 years: randomised controlled trial.
FREE, C; PALMER, MJ; MCCARTHY, OL; Jerome, L; BERENDES, S; Knight, M; CARPENTER, JR; Morris, TP; JAMAL, Z; Dhaliwal, F; FRENCH, RS; HICKSON, FC I; Gubijev, A; WELLINGS, K; Baraitser, P; ROBERTS, I; Bailey, JV; CLAYTON, T; DEVRIES, K; EDWARDS, P; Hart, G; Michie, S; Macgregor, L; Turner, KM E; Potter, K;
2022
BMJ
Building Healthcare Professionals’ confidence in COVID-19 vaccination: A series of pan-European and local webinars facilitating peer-to-peer communication
LARSON, H; KARAFILLAKIS, E; BERENDES, S; Alasmari, A; Bolio, A; ALASMARI, A;
2022
Sexual health interventions delivered to participants by mobile technology: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.
BERENDES, S; GUBIJEV, A; MCCARTHY, OL; PALMER, MJ; Wilson, E; FREE, C;
2021
Sexually Transmitted Infections
Diagnostic Infectious Diseases Testing Outside Clinics: A Global Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
KPOKIRI, EE; Marley, G; Tang, W; FONGWEN, N; WU, D; BERENDES, S; Ambil, B; Loveday, S-J; Sampath, R; Walker, JS; Matovu, JK B; Boehme, C; Pai, NP; TUCKER, JD;
2020
Open forum infectious diseases
Is development aid to strengthen health systems during protracted conflict a useful investment? The case of South Sudan, 2011-2015.
Valadez, JJ; BERENDES, S; Odhiambo, J; Vargas, W; Devkota, B; Lako, R; Jeffery, C;
2020
BMJ GLOBAL HEALTH
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