Dr Daniela Fuhr
Dipl-Psych MSc DrPH
Assistant Professor
in Mental Health Systems
LSHTM
15-17 Tavistock Place
London
WC1H 9SH
United Kingdom
My research addresses the treatment gap for common mental disorders and substance use disorders, and focuses on the design and evaluation of mental health programmes for conflict-affected and other vulnerable populations. I am particularly interested in brief psychological interventions and task-sharing in low and middle-income countries. One important aspect of my work is to strengthen mental health systems in resource constrained settings, and to seek ways to overcome health system challenges to improve mental health outcomes. I am a mixed methods researcher, and have worked on both experimental and observational study designs. Before joining LSHTM, I worked at the WHO Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse in Geneva.
I am Associate Editor of the BMC journal Conflict and Health.
Centres
Teaching
I teach on the MSc in Global Mental Health, and organise the core module “Design and Evaluation of Mental Health Programmes”. The course seeks to provide students with the necessary skills and knowledge to develop and evaluate innovative mental health interventions which facilitate access to care, and make best use of the health system resources which are available in a setting. The course focuses on formative research and pilot studies and employs problem-based learning; examples of different mental health programmes from low and middle-income countries are presented in class. I also tutor on the MSc in Global Mental Health, and take on research degree students with an interest in Global Mental Health, and mental health implementation research. I am also Deputy Chair of the Global Mental Health exam board.
Research
I currently work on a number of projects. I lead a programme of work called CHANGE funded by the NIHR-Wellcome Partnership for Global Health Research. The aim of CHANGE is to develop a brief psychological intervention to reduce alcohol misuse and co-occurring psychological problems in conflict-affected populations. The intervention will build on Problem Management Plus (PM+). We will test effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of our new intervention through two randomised controlled trials in Uganda and Ukraine. I also work on the STRENGHTS project, funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 scheme, and led by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In STRENGHTS, I lead the consortium’s work on scaling up PM+, and conduct cross-sectional population-level surveys and in-depth qualitative research to explore access to mental health care among Syrian refugees in eight study countries. I also work on GOAL funded by GCRF/ESRC which seeks to support government and partners to strengthen the mental health system for refugees and host communities in Lebanon. I continue my previous work on perinatal mental health. With partners in South Africa, I am currently working on the development of a brief counselling intervention to reduce alcohol misuse among pregnant women in the Western Cape.
Selected Publications
