London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The event hosted by Georgia Chisnall welcomed back Elspeth Harrison, Amy Jung, and Abubakar Mohammed (LSHTM alumni) who presented their summer projects and shared top tips on how to navigate the MSc dissertation process. The event drew an audience of over 150 attendees both in person and online.

The projects presented by the alumni covered diverse health topics, settings, and methodological approaches:

- Elspeth Harrison explored E-cigarettes in the United Kingdom through qualitative framing analysis.

- Amy Jung focused on the determinants of HIV transmission in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, using viral phylogenetics and molecular epidemiology.

- Abubakar Mohammed analyzed primary care service utilization in Kaduna State, Nigeria, employing quantitative analysis techniques like multivariate logistic regression.

The alumni shared several top tips gleaned from their MSc experiences:

• Remain calm and avoid panic.
• Seek inspiration from previous projects.
• Initiate early to account for potential data access and ethics-related delays.
• Advocate for feasibility and realism.
• Maintain regular communication with supervisors.
• Develop a robust analysis plan in collaboration with supervisors, especially when using secondary data.
• Stay organized using reference management tools like EndNote.
• Allocate ample time for writing up the project.

For those interested in exploring or proposing Summer Projects, the Centre for Evaluation has compiled a list of offerings. This list details project topics, methods, project details, required skills/modules, and contact information. The comprehensive list is accessible here