Wellcome Trust Renews Prof Mike English's Senior Research Fellowship

The Wellcome Trust has recently renewed Prof Mike English’ Senior Research Fellowship (SRF) for a period of five years. The Senior Research Fellowship scheme provides support for senior clinical academics who compete for funding on the basis of plans they present for a package of work spanning five years. This scheme helps clinical investigators to develop their research ideas and teams as well as to establish themselves as leading investigators in clinical academic medicine.

On hearing about his succesful application,  Prof. English said “It was a team effort, a lot of people were involved in putting the proposal together and the plan of research proposed is based on the hard work of the team over the past five years." He added that "I am  glad that the fellowship will provide a platform for the Child and Newborn Health Group (CNHG) to continue working together."

The Child and Newborn Health Group(CNHG) has been largely involved in developing national, evidence-based guidelines for care of severely ill children and newborns and long-term studies with a multidisciplinary team on initiating and establishing ‘best-practices' within rural government hospitals. Most of the work in the group is done in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health at all levels with support from the University of Nairobi (UON) and the Kenya Pediatrics Association (KPA). 

Some of the recent work from the Child and New Born Health Group (CNHG) includes:

• A Multifaceted Intervention to Implement Guidelines and Improve Admission Pediatric Care in Kenyan District Hospitals: A Cluster Randomized Trial

• Explaining the effects of a multifaceted intervention to improve inpatient care in rural Kenyan hospitals -- interpretation based on retrospective examination of data from participant observation, quantitative and qualitative studies.

• Ethics in practice: The state of the debate on promoting the social value of global health research in resource poor settings particularly Africa

• Quality of hospital care for sick newborns and severely malnourished children in Kenya: A two-year descriptive study in 8 hospitals.

• What clinical signs best identify severe illness in young infants aged 0-59 days in developing countries? A systematic review.

• Effect of a multi-faceted quality improvement intervention on inappropriate antibiotic use in children with non-bloody diarrhoea admitted to district hospitals in Kenya.

“You have to stick with things despite ups and downs, if healthcare science is what you want to do” Professor English advised those who were aspiring towards similar opportunities and science based careers.

According to Professor English, the next five years will see the CNHG embark on a new set of linked projects again focusing on rural hospitals. These will examine ways to improve routine service delivery, explore how to monitor hospitals routinely and how to improve dissemination of health innovations in resource poor settings.

Please click here for more information on the Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowships.