Stories from the coast

As a physician scientist and global health researcher, I’ve led efforts to stop the number one animal killer of people in the world: mosquitoes! Francis, Bryson and I have worked together to describe mosquito-borne infectious disease burden in communities, link mosquito breeding and disease risk to plastic trash, and conduct school and community-based interventions to prevent disease.

As all of this work is done in collaboration with Kenyan scientists, team members, and community stakeholders, our decades-long research has led to improvements in quality of life and job stability for our team and improvements in health for the communities we have served — but there is so much more to do and so many more people to help.

Pollution is choking the planet and the people of Kenya, where lack of safe water and poor sanitation lead to infectious diseases and other environmental health risks. These problems are exacerbated by strong cultural stigmas against collecting and working with trash. Although we plan to continue to do good research, we can’t lead grassroots efforts to effect change where it is most needed with research alone.

That’s why, after over 15 years of leading infectious disease research in Kenya, I embarked on this new journey: starting HERI, an organisation dedicated to alleviating some of these inequities by focusing on the interface between health and the environment. HERI works with and beside Kenyans to inspire community education, new research, policy change and grassroots activism in environmental health. Our outcomes are both people- and planet-focused.

Our goal is to translate the power of scientific knowledge into messages that are actionable in the community, and to change the trajectories of health for our communities and our planet.