Noni Mumba: Cultivating trust between science and communities

My name is Noni Mumba, and I work at the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme. I've been working here for 12 years now, and I work as Head of Engagement. What that means is I lead a team that is responsible for developing strategies and implementing approaches around the involvement of community members, stakeholders, policy makers, and the broader public, in the research activities that are conducted by KEMRI Wellcome - not only in Kilifi but also Nairobi, implementing engagement activities, and then develop strategies, approaches that then we will use to engage. For example, working with the community representatives so that we can get community views into research activities and even operational activities that are undertaken by KEMRI Wellcome. Also developing approaches for involving and exciting and getting interest of the young people, for example students, in science so that we can build a conduit of young researchers or young people who get an interest in doing research work, as well as involving and working with the media (a very important stakeholder), developing approaches and strategies of how media, how journalists can interact with scientists and build stories that then are factual, and are able to pass on information to the broader public.

A recent research project that I've been involved in is carrying out a climate change work in the community. I'm involved in a project known as NEWRISK: Novel Extreme Weather Risk Insurance Systems for Kenya, where we are engaging community members to understand their experiences of extreme weather events, and how these extreme weather events affect health services and health systems. 

The big question in the research work that I'm involved in is how can priorities of community members be integrated into development of interventions to build health systems resilience on extreme weather events.

My work makes a difference for communities, patients and even the public in that we provide them an opportunity to interact with scientists. Science is now no longer just a preserve of academics. The public, community members, patients are interested in science, and so I feel like I make a difference in the approaches that enable them to participate in the discourse of science and get them heard and get their concerns responded to, and generally also just get them to understand how research happens, such that the benefits that come out of science, then they can be able to take them up without too much issues.

My line of research matters because science now is so widespread. Technology has made it such that everybody can get information about science; sometimes it's negative information, sometimes it is positive information. I think a lot of funders need to get into the area of engagement because science eventually benefits the population. If the population does not understand science, scientists are just working, and their products or their findings then cannot be taken up because people don't believe in them.

This interview was recorded in September 2025.