Women Leaders in Health & Conflict is a new initiative with King's College London, grouping together aspiring and established women working as researchers and practitioners within fragile and conflict-affected areas to challenge the status quo and enhance opportunities for women’s leadership.

Background

Somalia is emerging from a long period of fragility and conflict. As a result, fledgling institutions are faced with monumental challenges. In the health domain, the population is among. the most vulnerable. Due to the dysfunctionality of the Somali public health system, development and humanitarian NGOs having played a vital role in bridging gaps in healthcare services in a sector that is almost entirely private.

As a result, the health authorities have struggled to reassert authority in the heavily occupied and fluid public health arena. An important means for policymakers to grapple with the complexities of such a complex health arena is through commissioning and utilising high quality research.

The first step in such an endeavour is to understand where the research gaps are and determine what priorities should be focused upon. The importance of health research in fragile and conflict affected states such as Somalia has been recognized.

However, insufficient attention has been paid to the role of health research in directing immediate health response activities, guiding long term policy and improving health outcomes in Somalia,

Aim

To act as a forum to build the research evidence base for public health activities in Somalia and strengthen research capacity within Somalia

Objectives

• Facilitate introductions for new research collaborations between national and international members on common areas of interest
• Identify and assist in promoting, opportunities for dissemination and uptake of research findings within Somalia and/or internationally
• Facilitate collaboration on joint funding applications
• Showcase ongoing research of members
• Facilitate the sharing of common datasets
• Advocate for greater resourcing for public health research in Somalia

Our achievements

In 2019 members of our group led on a study to quantify the excess mortality due to drought-triggered crisis. In 2021 members of our group undertook a study to quantify excess deaths due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Somalia. We have also presented our findings to a number of Somali policymakers, donors and government officials.

Meet the team

Abdihamid Warsame is the coordinator of the Somali Research Interest Group and a Research Fellow in Humanitarian Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. His current research, centres on developing, piloting and evaluating the application of improved metrics of performance in humanitarian settings and epidemics. Abdihamid has extensive humanitarian public health experience. He is a member of the Global Health Cluster’s Public Health Information Services Task Team as well as the Conflict and Health Research Group at King's College London. He holds an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

For queries, please contact Abdihamid Warsame.

The Sudan COVID-19 Community Prevention Research Group a collaboration between Sudan Y-peer programme, a network of 10,000 youth community volunteers living and working in diverse communities across Sudan, and a multidisciplinary group of Sudanese humanitarian and public health academics.