Join Dr. Margaret baker, Dr. Beth Sutherland and Dr. Gemma Aellah to learn about the value and utility of qualitative research methods to enhance MDA.

The guide featured in the podcast can be found by following the link: https://www.ntdtoolbox.org/toolbox-search/guide-improving-mda-using-qualitative-methods

Speaker bios:

Gem Aellah is Research Fellow in Health and Social Science in the Global Health and Infection Department at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK. Gem is part of the Social Science for Severe Stigmatizing Skin Neglected Tropical Diseases Foundation, a collaborative NIHR-funded research partnership across UK, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Sudan, aiming to end the neglect of three skin-NTDs, podoconiosis, mycetoma and scabies, through bringing the social sciences to bear on these conditions. Gem has a broad-based social science background and takes a practical anthropological approach, bringing social science on pressing global health issues together with creative methods and outputs, spanning non-specialist and interdisciplinary audiences. Her current work uses anthropological methods to explore how skin-NTD policymaking happens. Previous work involved ethnography of everyday life within a Kenyan Health and Demographic surveillance site during scale up of HIV care and treatment. She is co-author of creative handbook of tools to help global health workers talk about uncomfortable ethical dilemmas when doing research and intervention across inequalities. Gem @jachunya

Elizabeth Sutherland received her doctorate in Maternal and Child Health from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has worked in program evaluation and implementation science research for more than 15 years and has worked in a wide variety of health areas. Dr. Sutherland is currently employed at RTI International, serving as the Evaluation and Research advisor for the Act to End NTDs | East project.

Prof. Maggie Baker is an associate professor in the Department of Global Health at Georgetown University in the USA. The daughter of Scottish parents, she was born and grew up in Lima, Peru. Her research focuses on increasing access to infectious disease programs, including for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). She takes an implementation science approach, using multidisciplinary approaches, and is highly published. With over twenty years of global health experience, she has also worked at RTI International (most recently as the technical director of USAID’s large Act to End NTDs | East program, focused on supporting countries in Africa, Asia, and Haiti), with the UK government, and has spent five years embedded within the national government lymphatic filariasis program teams in Vanuatu and the Dominican Republic.

Using qualitative research methods to enhance MDA