Dr. Rhona Mijumbi is the Head of the Policy Unit at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Programme (MLW).
A seasoned research scientist and health policy analyst, she is also a senior lecturer of public policy at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM).
Rhona is also a Senior Research Fellow with the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), USA, a Research Fellow of the University of Johannesburg’s Africa Center for Evidence (ACE), South Africa, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine and the Clinical Epidemiology Unit at Makerere University, Uganda. She is the incoming chair of the Africa Evidence Network, a prestigious network that brings together practitioners at the science-to-policy nexus in Africa.
Before joining LSTM and MLW, Rhona headed the Centre for Rapid Evidence Synthesis (ACRES) as its founding director, and worked for over a decade championing the evidence-to-policy field in Africa. Working with the World Health Organization and other partners, she is behind the pilot and scale-up of several science-to-policy units in government departments in Africa, the Americas including Canada and Brazil, Asia, and Eastern Europe.
Rhona holds a Doctorate in Health Policy (McMaster University, Canada and Makerere University, Uganda), a Master of Science in Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Makerere University, Uganda), a Masters in International Public Health (University of Queensland, Australia), and a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda). Rhona’s work and research interests include understanding, developing and evaluating pathways at the science-policy nexus in complex policy and decision-making processes. This is especially in the context of urgent/emergency situations, health security, and health diplomacy.
Research
Rhona's research has been around understanding, developing and evaluating pathways for science and other forms of evidence to diffuse into the policy and decision-making processes. She is especially interested in this for complex decision-making processes, for example, urgent/emergency situations, and diplomatic and security related situations. She is also involved in understanding and strengthening health research systems in Africa.