Dr Islay Mactaggart
BA MA PhD
Assistant Professor
in Disability and Global Health, International Centre for Evidence in Disability/ International Centre for Eye Health
LSHTM
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom
I am an Assistant Professor in Disability and Global Health working across the International Centre for Evidence in Disability (ICED) and the International Centre for Eye Health (ICEH) at LSHTM.
Affiliations
Teaching
Alongside Prof. Hannah Kuper and Dorothy Boggs, I developed ICED's first MOOC (Massive Online Open Content) course on Global Health and Disability, which launched on the FutureLearn Platform in February 2018.
I am co-module organizer of the MSc module Epidemiology for Eye Disease.
I also teach on the following MSc modules:
- Global Disability and Health
- Research Skills for Field Research
- Non Communable Eye Diseases
I am currently co-supervisor of Tila Mainga, a Zambart/LSHTM PhD student focused on TB and mental health, and Stephene Maende, a University of Nairobi/LSHTM PhD student focused on the impact of COVID-19 on people with disabilities in Kenya.
Research
The overall objective of my research is to support equality of opportunity for people with disabilities and impairments through collection of robust population data on prevalence and aetiology, and inequalities in access to services experienced by these groups. I have a particular interest in strengthening the quality and useability of data, capitalising on digital tools and supporting the capacity of stakeholders to interpret data and statistics to create meaningful change.
I currently lead the development of the Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness (RAAB) survey methodology, repository and community at ICEH, which is a multi-year project with Peek Vision to rebuild RAAB as an end-to-end digital and cloud-based survey solution.
Alongside various research design, training and data analysis consulting roles, I have coordinated a number of international disability and eye health research projects at ICED/ICEH including:
- 2017 - present Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness Version 7 Project [Paper 1] [Paper 2]
- 2019 Gambia National Eye Health Survey [Paper 1]
- 2019 Water, Women and WASH Survey in Vanuatu [Paper 1]
- 2016 National Survey of Disability in Guatemala [Reports]
- 2015-2016 Measuring the Impact of Physical Rehabilitation Project in Myanmar [Report]
- 2013-2014 Building the Evidence Base in Disability Project: Cameroon and India [Reports] [Article1] [Article2] [Article3]
- 2011-2012 The Child Disability Key Informant Project: Bangladesh and Pakistan [Report] [Article]
I contribute to the Disability Evidence Portal, conducting reviews of reviews to develop Evidence Briefs to support evidence-based decision-making in disability-inclusive development. I was also responsible for developing the Key Informant Working Guide – a working guide for researchers and implementers wishing to use the Key Informant Approach to identifying children with disabilities in surveys and programs.
I represent ICED at the UNICEF Expert Group on Child Disability Measurement and the World Bank/CDC Washington Group on Disability Statistics. I have written several disability analysis blogs on SciDev.net and cbm.org (measuring disability article).
In 2018, I completed a Staff PhD based on mywork on disability measurement - in particular the relationship between clinical impairment screening and reported activity limitations in population-based surveys.
Selected Publications
