Dr Aoife Doyle
BSc MPhil PhD
Assistant Professor
of Epidemiology
LSHTM
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom
Fax.
I started my career in laboratory sciences and in 1998 obtained a BSc (Hons) in Pharmacology from University College Dublin. I was then drawn to the study of diseases in populations and disease prevention, and in 2000 I completed an MPhil in Epidemiology at the University of Cambridge. Following my MPhil, I spent 2 years working at the University of Aberdeen on the development of methods to measure maternal and perinatal mortality. Between 2002 and 2004 I was an EPIET fellow, based at Institut de Vielle Sanitaire, Paris where I contributed to infectious disease surveillance and participated in both national and international outbreak investigations. I moved to LSHTM in 2004 to lead the long-term impact evaluation of the MEMA kwa Vijana Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Intervention in Mwanza, Tanzania, and completed my PhD on this topic in 2010. Between 2010 and 2015 I held a MRC Population Health Scientist Post-doctoral Fellowship.
I lived and worked for two years in Mwanza (2007-8) and have also spent some time working in Ghana, Sudan and Turkey.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I co-organise a short course on Adolescent Health in Low and Middle Income Countries and teach on the Extended Epidemiology (2007), Control of RTIs/STIs (3192) and AIDS (3174) in-house modules. I am also a tutor for the Epidemiology of communicable diseases (EP301) distance learning module.
Research
I am a quantitative epidemiologist interested in the prevention and control of HIV and other STIs, and the improvement of other aspects of sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing. My work to date has focused primarily on the sexual health of young people in developing countries; however, I am increasingly interested in how we can best address the broader health needs of adolescent populations. My experience in the evaluation of behavioural interventions has led me to have a general interest in the design of interventions and in appropriate methods for their evaluation.
Since 2004 I have been involved in the long-term impact evaluation, within a community randomised trial, of the MEMA kwa Vijana, adolescent sexual and reproductive health intervention in Mwanza, Tanzania. This long-term impact evaluation survey of ~14,000 young people took place 9 years post intervention implementation and measured the intervention impact on selected knowledge, behavioural and biological outcomes. http://www.memakwavijana.org/ Follow on work, during my post-doctoral fellowship, included an examination of the influence of types of sexual partnerships, early sexual histories and broader community factors on the sexual and reproductive health of young people in rural Tanzania.
More recently, I have been involved in a number of studies looking at the health profile and health service needs of adolescents. Between 2013 and 2015, I was involved in preliminary work for the INDEPTH Health Transitions to Adulthood Study (IHTAS). This study was a collaboration between David Ross and myself at LSHTM, and colleagues in Kilifi, Kenya, Dodowa, Ghana and at INDEPTH. I am currently collaborating with the Healthy Adolescents and Young Adult (HAYA) research unit at the Africa Centre in KwaZulu- Natal, South Africa on a study looking at health service provision for and utlisation by adolescents and young adults.
Currently, I am involved in the external evaluation of two multi-country adolescent health initiatives: Adolescents 360 which aims to increase the use of modern contraceptives among 15-19 year old girls in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Nigeria; and DREAMS which aims to decrease HIV incidence in adolescent girls in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
