1

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Ijeoma Uchenna Itanyi was an AGIP scholar (National Merit Category), at the University of Port-Harcourt where she graduated with MBBS in 2005. In 2010, she obtained a Master’s degree in Public Health (with honours) from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA. She has a certificate in Health Economics from the World Bank Institute, USA, and is a fellow of the West African College of Physicians in Community Health. She is currently a lecturer in Epidemiology and Medical Statistics unit of the Department of Community medicine, College of Medicine, University of Nigeria. Her research interests are prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), implementation science research and health systems strengthening in resource-limited settings. She received an early career training award for capacity building in chronic disease research in Africa from University of Cambridge. She has coordinated both small and large-scale epidemiological and implementation research studies (on diabetes and HIV) funded by international organisations like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA and Wellcome Trust, UK. She served as principal investigator for a study that evaluated inequalities in adolescent tobacco use in southeast, Nigeria, funded by the NIH through Medical Education Partnership Initiative Nigeria (MEPIN). She has also served as technical consultant to UNICEF and CS-SuNN (on nutrition), Abt Associates and PATHS2 (on health systems strengthening and public-private partnership), National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (on child health), and State Ministry of Health (Nutrition unit), Anambra State. She has presented her research on NCDs at several national and international fora.