Aoife is an epidemiologist specialising in intervention and programme evaluation, and the improvement of adolescent health and well-being. In 2021, Aoife was awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of Y-Check, a novel adolescent health and wellbeing check-up visit intervention in Zimbabwe.
Aoife joined LSHTM in 2004 to lead the long-term impact evaluation of the MEMA kwa Vijana Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Intervention in Mwanza, Tanzania, and completed her PhD on this topic in 2010. Between 2010 and 2015 she held a MRC Population Health Scientist Post-doctoral Fellowship. Prior to joining LSHTM Aoife spent two years at the University of Aberdeen and two years as an EPIET fellow, based at Institut de Vielle Sanitaire, Paris where she contributed to infectious disease surveillance and participated in both national and international outbreak investigations. Between 2021 and 2023 Aoife was based full-time at The Health Research Unit (THRU ZIM) at Biomedical Research and Training Institute in Zimbabwe. She has also lived and worked for two years in Mwanza, Tanzania (2007-8) and has experience working in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Sudan.
Aoife is Adolescent theme co-lead in the Centre for Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive, and Child Health (MARCH) and co-lead for the Quantifying Impact theme in the Centre for Evaluation. She is passionate about engaging young people in research and in building the capacity of young researchers, and currently supervises MSc and PhD students in the UK, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Affiliations
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Teaching
Aoife co-organises a short course on Global Adolescent Health /study/courses/short-courses/adolescent-health and teaches on Control of STIs (3192), Evaluation of Public Health Interventions (1127), and Family Planning Programmes (2401) in-house modules. She is also a tutor for the Epidemiology of communicable diseases (EP301) distance learning module. Aoife supervises PhD and DrPH students in addition to MSc tutoring and project supervision.
Research
Aoife's research focuses on the health and wellbeing of adolescents and young people and she has a particular interest in the design of interventions and in appropriate methods for their evaluation. Her work addresses the broad health needs of adolescent populations including improving access to health services, the intersection between education and health, engagement of adolescents in the research process, and exploring the potential of digital interventions.
Aoife's current and recent research includes:
Y-Check: a WHO-coordinated multi-country study of adolescent health check-ups in LMICs. Funded through a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (2021-28), Aoife is leading the implementation and evaluation of this novel adolescent health and wellbeing check-up visit intervention in Zimbabwe. More informaton on Y-Check can be found here
External outcome evaluation of the Adolescents 360 intervention which aims to increase the use of modern contraceptives among 15-19 year old girls in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Nigeria
Study of technology and mobile phone use among adolescents in Zimbabwe focusing on the implications for digital health interventions
Crowdsourcing with adolescents in Senegal to address social norms limiting their access to sexual and reproductive health services
PRIDE randomised controlled trial of a low-intensity, lay counsellor-delivered, problem-solving intervention for common mental health problems in school-based adolescents in New Dehli, India
Selected Publications
