Speaker: Ruth Nduati, MBChB, MMed, MPH

Title: Building a pipeline of research enabled health professionals - HEPI Kenya experience

Ruth Nduati, MBChB, MPH is a Professor of Paediatrics at the School of Medicine, College of Health Sciences, University of Nairobi. She is a Paediatrician and Epidemiologist who has taught at the University of Nairobi for many years.  Her major achievement is her contribution to the understanding of the epidemiology and biology of breast milk transmission of HIV and in integration of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV in resource-constrained settings.  Currently, Prof Ruth Nduati is leading an initiative to develop a Physician Researcher Training program in the School of Medicine which could be the first such program in Africa.  This activity has been funded by a Fogarty training grant.  Epidemiology courses developed in this initiative is the core material for teaching advanced research skills to junior faculty in the College of Health Sciences who are supported by the Partnership for Health Research Training in Kenya (P-HERT) a Fogarty funded grant led by Professor Dalton Wamalwa.  Dr. Nduati’s core duties are training undergraduate and postgraduate doctors in pediatrics and child health.  In this capacity she has supervised more than 30 Masters Dissertation, and several doctoral thesis.  Prof. Ruth Nduati maintains an active research collaboration with the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington and through this has been able to carry out research and mentor several generations of students and researchers who are now leaders in their own right.