Cohort Seven (2022)

Ebenezar Effiang

Ebenezar is a health economist with experience spanning across the NHS, CROs and pharmaceuticals.

Ebenezar is a multi-university graduate with BSc, PGCE and MSc Economic Evaluation in Healthcare from Amsterdam Business School, Sheffield Hallam University, and City University of London respectively. He is currently in the final few months of MSc Health Economics and Decision Modelling programme at the School of Health and Related Studies (ScHARR), Sheffield University. Ebenezar worked as a college lecturer for 12 years prior to transitioning into health care consulting and has since then worked at Oxford AHSN, ICON Clinical Research, NHS, and Imperial College Health Partners.

Research interest: Ebenezar’s research interest is in the elderly and childrens’ health, with primary focus on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in under 5s to help inform public health policy decisions that can improve long-term health outcomes and reduce inequalities.

Catherine Gallagher

Catherine is a health and social care graduate and professional with a decade of experience in the sector. Catherine went to school in Scotland and completed her undergraduate degree in sociology and social policy at Trinity College Dublin. In 2019 she graduated with a master’s degree in public policy and management from Birkbeck University. Most recently Catherine has managed projects in clinical audit for the Royal College of Physicians. The projects Catherine has managed have been within the Care Quality Improvement Department. She has overseen complex cross stakeholder projects such as the national audit of inpatient falls, the familial hypercholestoremia audit and the fallsafe and carefall hospital e-learning projects.

Catherine has specialised in statistical analysis of health and care data and related guidance and policies. To further her expertise, during the programme Catherine intends to develop advanced quantitative analytic skills to review complex multi-component public health interventions and policies that reduce non-communicable and chronic diseases, with a focus on health inequalities.
Distributional cost effectiveness analysis is an area of health economics she is interested in studying in greater depth.

Madeleine Henney

Maddy completed a BSc in Medical Biochemistry at University of Huddersfield in 2014 and an MSc in Health Economics and Decision Modelling at the University of Sheffield in 2020. Prior to starting the MSc she worked as a trainee clinical scientist for Lancashire teaching hospitals NHS foundation trust.

Since 2017 she has worked as a public health modeller with the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group working on a range of alcohol policy modelling projects. Maddy is keen to develop her modelling skills and learn complex modelling techniques to then apply these skills to a range of public health issues that impact on health inequalities.

Calum Lewis

Calum completed an undergraduate in BA Economics at the University of Sheffield, followed by a Masters in MSc Money, Banking and Finance at the same University – and is now set to return again as part of the PhD programme in Public Health Economics and Decision Science!

As part of his Masters, Calum completed a dissertation in the Economic Determinants of Body Mass Index – which is what really sparked his interests in the intersection between Economics and Health.

In the intervening period since his Masters, Calum has been working as a Data Analyst at Deloitte (where he also became a Chartered Accountant) providing analytical support on a variety of audits. This enabled him to develop his coding abilities as well as data visualisation techniques – something he is keen to build on during the programme.

Asghar Meerza

Following the completion of Asghar’s BSc in Biomedical Sciences from King’s College London, he worked as a Clinical Researcher conducting pharmaceutical product research for clients such as international hospitals and pharmacies. 

Asghar’s interest in socioeconomic inequalities in healthcare provision led him to pursue a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) at Imperial College London. With a passion in Global Health and Non-communicable disease research, he completed his final epidemiology research project titled ‘Investigating the Quality of Chronic Respiratory Disease (CRD) Services in Malawi’. 

Loise Ng’ang’a

Loise holds a MSc. Global Health from Duke University in the USA and a Bsc. Nursing from Moi University Kenya. Prior to her graduate studies, Loise worked at AMPATH- Kenya as a research assistant in the cardiovascular center of excellence (COE). Her interest in reducing the healthcare inequalities especially among the underserved populations propelled her to take up a research manager position for Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) at Partners In Health (PIH) – Rwanda. At PIH, she led and coordinated methodological and implementation research in the NCDs department. Her most recent projects included an open randomized control trial that sought to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of implementing self-monitoring of blood glucose among type 2 diabetes patients in three rural districts in Rwanda and a feasibility study to explore the acceptability of delivering insulin medication using aerial delivery services in rural Rwanda.

Research interests: Non-communicable diseases; implementation research; Health system strengthening

Brenda Oulo

Dr Brenda Oulo holds a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBchB) from the University of Nairobi, Kenya (2010) and completed a Master of Science (MSc) in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa in 2018.

She is an expert in adolescent research, previously the recipient of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) adolescent research fellowship award in 2018. Currently, she is the deputy director of the Girls’ Agency Lab (GAL) and regional head of research at AMPLIFY girls, a collective network of 25 community-based organisations in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda working to localize research, development and investment in adolescent girls’ agency.