Steering committee

Dr. Mary Chambers is the Head of Public Engagement at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit Vietnam, which is part of the Wellcome Africa Asia Programme. Mary has been in Vietnam for more than 20 years – initially as a medical entomologist, working on malaria and dengue transmission.

Over the past decade, she has developed the public engagement programme for OUCRU Ho Chi Minh City, and daughter units in Hanoi, Nepal, and Indonesia. The PE team has over 20 members who work on a diverse range of engagement projects with a range of communities including schoolchildren, farmers, or patients in clinical research trials. They also have a strong emphasis on strengthening the capacity of researchers and healthcare workers to engage with their communities. 

Mary’s personal interests lie in using participatory art and film to amplify community voices and bring them into conversations about biomedical research.

Sassy Molyneux is a Professor in Global Health employed by Oxford University, UK, based at the Kenya Medical Research Institute-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya.

She is a behavioural scientist, with a background in human geography. Her current main research areas span health policy and systems research, including system financing, governance, and responsiveness to patients and the broader public; and research ethics, including the everyday ethics of conducting studies in resource-poor settings, and processes and practices of informed consent, benefit-sharing, community engagement, and data-sharing in diverse contexts. 

Cross-cutting interests include supporting organizational capacity and positive change, understanding and challenging gendered power relations and underlying structural drivers of those relations, intersectional analyses, and translating research findings into policy and practice.

Noni is the head of Community Engagement at KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP). Her role is to strengthen relations and build mutual understanding between researchers and communities in KWTRP sites, which are located in Kilifi and Nairobi in Kenya, and Mbale in Uganda.

With over 10 years of experience in HIV, Malaria, and Child Health across Kenya, Noni has expertise in Health and Strategic Behaviour Change Communication, Social Marketing, and Science Communication. Her responsibilities include developing best practice strategies for community and public engagement, monitoring and evaluating engagement activities, and mentoring community liaison and research staff.

Noni holds a Bachelor of Science degree in International Business Administration and a Master of Arts degree in Development Communication. She leads a team of 8 experienced engagement staff.

Trudie Lang is a Professor of Global Health Research; Head of The Global Health Network and Senior Research Scientist in Tropical Medicine, Nuffield Department of Medicine. She has over 20 years of experience in running clinical trials, including trials in the developing world, for the pharmaceutical industry, the World Health Organisation, and academia.

Trudie focuses on combating diseases of poverty through the generation of high-quality evidence. She has worked in industry, academia, and UN organisations. With her team and partners, she works to drive better health outcomes in vulnerable communities by enabling local leadership and the ground-up implementation of high-quality health research studies.

Jaom Fisher is the Knowledge Hub Coordinator for Connect with The Global Health Network. She previously    had oversight for the Research Enrichment team within the Public and Community Engagement Unit of the Oxford Clinical Research Unit, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Projects areas included capacity strengthening for Healthcare workers, researcher and research community engagement, and COVID19 Social Science and Public Engagement research into the experienece of Healthcare workers and vulnerable communities. 

Jaom’s social work and community development background has encompassed work in a number of countries in the areas of refugee resettlement, asylum seeker representation, cross-cultural contexts, international development and poverty alleviation, organisational capacity building, educational and community engagement, and capacity building.