Nicole Young, MPH, MSc, PhD

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Nominated From: University of Washington

Research Site: Kenya

Research Area: Prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, Maternal and child health, antenatal care service delivery, implementation science

Primary Mentor: Grace John-Stewart

Research Project

 

Discrete event simulation (DES) modelling of delivering PrEP in antenatal care clinics in western Kenya: bottlenecks and strategies for service optimization

 

My research will use discrete-event simulation modelling to identify challenges and potential strategies for service optimization for delivering oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to pregnant women during antenatal care visits at health facilities in western Kenya.

 

Research Significance

HIV prevalence is disproportionately higher in western Kenya around the lake Victoria basin. Pregnant women are especially vulnerable to HIV infection and may be at higher risk than their non-pregnant counterparts. There is urgent need for effective HIV prevention during the prenatal and postpartum period in order to protect pregnant women and their children in this high-prevalence area. Integrating PrEP into routine antenatal care would impose additional workload on human resources with downstream effects on workflow and patient wait-times. This research aims to understand the pragmatic service delivery implications of implementing PrEP to inform scale-up and ensure life-saving interventions will be taken up successfully.

 

Advice for Potential Candidates

Engage in cross-disciplinary creativity and find innovations and methods from other fields! Spend time looking, observing, understanding to find important questions to answer.

 

Publications

View on PubMed

Mentors

 

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