DGH Professors Receive Grant to Research Text Messaging and Maternal Mental Health

A recently-awarded grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will allow Keshet Ronen, clinical assistant professor of Global Health, to develop natural language processing tools to use SMS text messaging to monitor and support maternal mental health in Kenya.

The grant, titled “Leveraging interactive SMS messaging to monitor and support maternal mental health in Kenya”, will fund Ronen’s research through May 2022 with a total award of $128,116. Ronen explained the purpose of this grant, as well as the public health impacts it can create.

Washington and Kenya: Opportunities for Joint Learning on the COVID-19 Pandemic

The UW Department of Global Health and MetaCenter for Pandemic Disease Preparedness and Global Health Security are partnering with Kenyatta National Hospital to host a webinar series, "Washington and Kenya: Opportunities for joint learning on the COVID-19 epidemic". The series, developed by Keshet Ronen and John Kinuthia in response to requests from our long-time partners in Kenya, seeks to share lessons learned from Washington’s early experience of the pandemic, and engage with clinicians, public health practitioners and policymakers in Kenya as they develop Kenya’s response.

Community-based Counselors Help Mitigate Grief, Stress Among Children Orphaned in East Africa (UW News - Features Shannon Dorsey)

A first-of-its-kind clinical trial involving more than 600 children in Kenya and Tanzania, in which community members were trained to deliver mental health treatment, showed improvement in participants’ trauma-related symptoms up to a year after receiving therapy, new research shows.

Weighty Issue: ‘Kenya’s Strongest Professor’ Speaks Out After Contest

That a professor of epidemiology could take part in an odd competition like weightlifting was sure to leave Kenyans’ mouths agape.

Added to the fact that the mother of four and grandmother of two is a few days shy of her 58th birthday (she was born on October 26, 1961, like President Uhuru Kenyatta), the result was an internet sensation.

That is why a photograph of Prof Elizabeth Bukusi, chief research officer at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), has been doing the rounds on social media in the past week.

PrEParing family planning clinics in Kenya to prevent new HIV infections

In sub-Saharan Africa, many young women and adolescent girls are at high risk of HIV infection. In a new research paper published in the open access journal PLOS Medicine, Kenneth Mugwanya and co-authors report on a study aiming to investigate the feasibility of providing antiretroviral drugs via family planning clinics to prevent HIV infection in young women.

Faculty Profile: Susan Graham - Associate Professor, Global Health and Medicine

In late-May of 2019, Kenya’s high court voted to uphold laws criminalizing homosexual sex. This news was pertinent to Susan Graham, an Associate Professor in the UW Departments of Global Health and Medicine whose research focus is on HIV prevention and care for vulnerable populations. Graham began working in Kenya in 2004, and started research on HIV prevention and care for gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) there in 2006. 

Improving Survival Rate of Malnourished Children Critical – Researchers Say

By Agnes Kyotalengerire / New Vision

The three-day meeting attracted investigators from the six collaborating countries of Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh and Pakistan who admit malnourished children, follow them through hospitalization and then six months after.

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