Prof. Ruth Stewart is the Director of the Alliance for Living Evidence (Alive) at the Future Evidence Foundation. As Director of Alive she builds collaborative living evidence partnerships for meaningful impact. Having grown up in Malawi, she studied in the UK, and lives and works in South Africa. Her career has focused on developing approaches for producing useful, policy-relevant evidence for decision-makers. Her focus is on facilitating systems-level change, and supporting others to do so, with an emphasis on evidence-policy partnerships as a mechanism for change. Previously she has led teams supporting significant evidence-to-policy systems-developments within South African policy processes. She has largely pioneered the idea of evidence networks, and formed the cross-sector, transdisciplinary Africa Evidence Network in 2012. The Network now includes 6000 people from across government, academia, business and more. You can read more about her work with Alive here
Ekwaro A. Obuku is a Uganda Medical Doctor and served as a co-founder member of the Africa Centre for Systematic Reviews and Knowledge Translation (www.chs.mak.ac.ug/afcen/about-us) and the Uganda Clearing House for Health Policy and Systems Research (https://uch.cengkuru.com/) both situated at the College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda. Ekwaro completed his doctoral studies about research to policy at Makerere University, Uganda and McMaster University, Canada. Ekwaro has been involved in efforts to link research to policy including skills transfer for evidence synthesis across Africa for over 15 years and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Patrick Okwen is a medical doctor and researcher with experience working with policy makers, governments, and development agencies at international level. He has experience working within the basic services (health, education, climate resilience, and agriculture) and knowledge brokering in Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, and Chad.
Patrick dedicates much of his time to training young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in development work and work across the evidence ecosystem. He is part of the Daara Development Academy, a league of promising African leaders promoting Early Child Care and Education. He has won several leadership awards with Joanna Briggs Institute, Cochrane Aubrey Sheiham, Africa Evidence Network, Campbell Robert Boruch, French Embassy in Cameroon, and the World Bank.
Patrick has led projects across the evidence ecosystem, including evidence brokering, storytelling research evidence, and evidence contextualization with partners like Education Endowment Foundation, CEDIL Programme, Grand Challenges Canada, IDRC, iScientia Belgium, and Wakka Foundation Holland.
Nange Lisette Malung holds a Masters degree in theatre arts and cinematography and currently into PhD program. She is a part time lecturer at the University of Yaounde 1, department of Arts and Archeology. Founder and president of the Visionary Theatre Troupe/Visionary Productions. She is a playwright, director, actress and producer in the theatre and cinema sector. A multi-award winner- emerged as Laureats for the National Writing Competition for Young Authors 2018 in Cameroon organized by the Ministry of Arts and Culture, laureat of 10days for 1 film titled – My Core Indubitably, a screenwriting competition organised by the Goethe Institut in partnership with Ecrans Noirs and Filmarche. The film further emerged as winner for Best Short Film at the Red Feathers Awards, 2017 was further screened on October 29th, 2018 at the 3rd Afro-China Arts and Folklore festival held in Egypt. Written, produced and directed many theatre performances with the Ministry of Arts and Culture, privately with FIAA, the Cameroon French Institute-IFC, the Goethe Institut and many independent creations with foreign institutions across the nationally and internationally. Has published a drama piece and works currently as a storyteller with Ebase Africa.
Associate Prof Tamara Kredo holds the position of Director of the Health Systems Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council. She is a clinical epidemiologist leading research in the field of health policy and clinical guideline methods. She trained as a medical doctor, specialising in Clinical Pharmacology, and completed a PhD in Public Health. Tamara is dedicated to enhancing credible and transparent evidence-informed healthcare decision-making particularly in lower resources settings such as in Africa. Tamara has fulfilled several leadership roles, including founding the sub-Saharan African regional network, Cochrane Africa in 2017. Among many highlights, she co-leads the South African GRADE Network; consults to WHO as a guideline methodologist; was a co-opted Trustee of the Guidelines International Network Governing Board; was the host and chair of the local organizing committee for the the Global Evidence Summit in 2017; and in 2020 was elected to the Cochrane Board.
Dr. Etienne Ngeh is a Physiotherapist, Cardiac Rehabilitation Specialist and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He holds several significant positions: Chair of the African Regional Community for the Guideline International Network (GIN), Team Lead at the Research Organization for Health Education and Rehabilitation-Cameroon (ROHER-CAM), Head of the Physiotherapy Department at St. Louis University Institute in Douala, Cameroon, Coordinator of the African Rehabilitation Network. He is a research fellow of the Department of Allied Health Professions at the Health Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, England. His research interests is in Health Promotion, Evidence Synthesis, Cardiovascular Health, Rehabilitation, and Clinical Guideline Development and Implementation, Knowledge Translation especially in Africa and Low-and Medium-Income Countries.
Dr. Bey-Marrié Schmidt is a public health researcher specialising in evidence synthesis, community engagement, and knowledge translation. Her expertise lies in conducting different types of qualitative and quantitative evidence syntheses of public health and health system interventions. She is also interested in the collaborative design, implementation, and evaluation of community engagement and knowledge translation initiatives that promote inclusive and equitable partnerships for evidence-informed decision-making.
