Understanding context before action

Effective public health strategies depend on local realities.

Integrating geocultural and anthropological research to understand mobility patterns, livelihoods, behaviours, and community structures that shape disease risk and influence intervention uptake. This work examines how community structures and everyday practices influence transmission risk and the uptake of public health strategies. These insights guide the design of surveillance systems, models, and implementation strategies to ensure that actions are culturally grounded and operationally feasible.

Focus areas:

• Community, behavioural, and mobility mapping to understand local practices, livelihoods, and service access
• Contextual and ethnographic field investigations to identify social and cultural factors influencing transmission risk and intervention uptake
• Translation of local insights into surveillance design, modelling assumptions, and implementation strategies