Helen is an epidemiologist and medical statistician. She has been at LSHTM since 1997, and her research focuses on adolescent health, mental health, menstrual health and HIV epidemiology in low-income settings.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
Helen co-organises the Advanced Course in Epidemiological Analysis which runs for 2 weeks each September in hybrid format. In 2023, the 56 course participants came from 29 countries. She also teaches on several MSc modules on epidemiology and statistics.
Research
Helen's research focuses on adolescent health, menstrual health, mental health and sexual & reproductive health including HIV infection in low-income settings. She has collaborated on many observational and intervention studies, including studies of interventions to improve uptake of HIV testing, linkage-to-care and adherence particularly among young people in southern Africa. Work on mental health includes randomised controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of lay health-worker delivered counselling interventions for depression, anxiety and alcohol use disorders.
Helen is Principal Investigator of the MENISCUS trial to evaluate the impact of a school-based menstrual health intervention in Uganda (funded by the Joint Global Health Trial Scheme), and the Better Sleep Better Health study to develop an intervention to improve sleep health among school-going adolescents in Uganda. She is a Co-I on a range of adolescent health and mental health related intervention studies.
Helen has a specific interest in capacity strengthening and is PI of a newly-funded MRC International Statistics and Epidemiology Partnership which aims to strengthen and sustain an African-centered network of applied medical statisticians.