I am a health social scientist specialising in mixed methods research. My work is on mental health, child and adolescent health and implementation research. My particular interest is in the design and evaluation of school-based interventions to reduce bullying and improve mental wellbeing. I also have extensive experience in social, cultural, economic and behavioural aspects of infectious disease control. I began my career studying cholera control in Sub-Saharan in Africa. After completing my doctoral studies at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and University of Basel in 2015, I worked at the National University of Singapore before moving to the UK on a fellowship to work at LSHTM.
Affiliations
Teaching
At LSHTM, I am a module organiser of the Foundations for Health Promotion module and supervise PhD and DrPH students. I previously was a seminar leader on the Health Policy, Process and Power module. At NUS, I taught courses on mixed methods research, global health and vaccinology. At Swiss TPH, I taught on the cultural epidemiology course for MSc and PhD students.
Research
I am currently lead researcher on a pilot study evaluating a whole-school intervention in primary schools in the UK to reduce bullying and improve mental health. I previously led the process evaluation of a mental health intervention in secondary schools in the UK, and am involved in school-based interventional research on sexual health. During the Covid-19 pandemic, I was a co-investigator on the Schools Infection Survey (https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres-projects-groups/schools-infect…) and led the implementation science research studying feasibility and acceptability of Covid-19 preventive measures in English schools. I also have interest in vaccination-related research, and in health policy, health system and other factors affecting acceptance of vaccines.
My doctoral research, funded through a grant from the World Health Organization, examined pandemic influenza control and acceptance of vaccines in the aftermath of 2009 influenza pandemic, in an area of India that was disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Thereafter, I was lead researcher studying: implementation of HPV vaccines through a fellowship awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation; strategies for improving influenza vaccine acceptance among healthcare workers in Singapore through a grant from the Ministry of Education, Singapore; and the acceptance of maternal vaccines in South India on a fellowship awarded by the ‘Immunising pregnant women and infants’ network. My research portfolio includes ethnography and study of cholera control in Western Kenya, analysing determinants of oral cholera vaccine acceptance across three settings in Sub-Saharan Africa, evaluating tuberculosis control programmes in Cambodia, understanding menstrual hygiene practices and WASH in Western India, and economic evaluations of pneumococcal vaccines in Mongolia and elsewhere.
Selected Publications
