Strengthening health and research systems

Health systems in LMICs face daily stresses such as resource shortages and policy changes, alongside periodic shocks such as epidemics. Enhancing resilience combined with research ethics ensures high-quality research responsive to local communities. Minimising moral distress among frontline staff in international research is crucial for sustaining quality healthcare and advancing science amid challenging conditions.

Governance in practice

Professor Sassy Molyneux's main interests reside in Social science and Ethics in Public Health. Over the years, social scientists have developed a programme of empirical work on research ethics. This work is based on an understanding that while the ethics of human subjects research may be universal, there can be big differences across contexts and circumstances in key ethical issues or principles.

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Sassy Molyneux is an interdisciplinary researcher, with a background in human geography, behavioural research and organisational studies.  She moved back to UK from Kenya in 2020 after 27 years of working for the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP), and remains a member of the Health Systems and Research Ethics Department in KWTRP.  Sassy's main research interests span health policy and systems research (governance, finance, responsiveness to patient and public priorities and needs, and treatment-seeking), implementation research and empirical ethics.  Current foci include:

• Vulnerability, agency and moral distress in health care provision and research conduct
  
• Stakeholder engagement, justice and accountability in health/research systems
  
• Patient experience and continuity of care in health delivery
• Health system resilience and responsiveness in the face of chronic stress and periodic shocks

Sassy contributes to strategic development of social science and health systems research across the Nuffield Department of Medicine and in KWTRP, and serves on a number of International Advisory Groups including for Health Systems Global, WHO/TDR, and SARETI.   

Current research projects:

• Wellcome Trust funded realist reviews of community engagement and participatory research
• Gates Funded research aimed at developing interventions to strengthen continuity of care post discharge from hospitals
• Science For Africa Funded Capacity Strengthening Grant
• Wellcome Trust funded Decolonisation Exchange
• NIHR funded Health Policy and Systems Research project aimed at strengthening quality of care for newborns (HIGH-Q).
• Wellcome Trust funded programme to build capacity in global health research ethics and community engagement across the Wellcome Programmes. See Global Health Bioethics

Recently completed consortia:   Vulnerability and Agency among women and children in LMIC research (REACH); Resilient and Responsive Health Systems (RESYST); Partnership to foster gender and ethics analysis in health systems research and practice (Research in Gender and Ethics)