Professor Emelda Okiro
Contact information
Research groups
Emelda Okiro
Professor of Global Health
- Lead - Population Health, KWTRP
Emelda heads the Population Health Unit within the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya. She has over 18 years of population health experience at country, regional and global levels. She have proven competency in public health and health systems research, implementation and programme evaluation. Emelda’s current work aims to understand determinants of health transitions and vulnerabilities at fine scales, evaluate healthcare access, and work to develop the science around using routine health information across Africa and to embed the use of evidence for country level decision-making.
Before her current position, Emelda was a Program Officer/Gates Fellow within the Global Health Team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has previously worked on projects that have evaluated the public health impact of malaria control and anti-retroviral treatment programs while at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation-IHME and on developing primary health care strategies at Philips Research Africa.
Emelda serves on the BMC Medicine Editorial Board and on the TDR Scientific Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) has a special interest in science mentorship and capacity building and global health advocacy within Africa. Emelda has a PhD in Epidemiology, has been awarded two internationally competitive Wellcome Trust (UK) Fellowships and is widely published.
Recent publications
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Evaluating the gap in rapid diagnostic testing: insights from subnational Kenyan routine health data.
Robert BN. et al, (2024), BMJ open, 14
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Population confidence in the health system in 15 countries: results from the first round of the People's Voice Survey.
Kruk ME. et al, (2024), The Lancet. Global health, 12, e100 - e111
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The path to universal health coverage in five African and Asian countries: examining the association between insurance status and health-care use.
Odipo E. et al, (2024), The Lancet. Global health, 12, e123 - e133
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Revealing the extent of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya based on serological and PCR-test data
Ojal J. et al, (2023)
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Malaria vaccine coverage estimation using age-eligible populations and service user denominators in Kenya.
Moturi AK. et al, (2023), Malaria journal, 22