Dr Valerie Dione Makoge epse Forbin

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Location
Cameroon
Insitute of Medical Research and Medicinal Plants Studies Centre for Research on Health and Priority Pathologies
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Departments

Laboratory of Parasitology

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Focus Areas / Specialisation

    Salutogenesis and health promotion
    Public Health
    Parasitology

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Bio

My research focus is malaria and other parasitic diseases. In my research, I seek to understand how vulnerable groups or people in low-resource settings cope with the burden of infectious diseases in addition to the multiple challenges they face. Starting off from an integration of my salutogenic health promotion and parasitology background, my aim is to further explore how diseases and other threats affect people in a combined way. So far, research deals with people’s challenges in an isolated way. My integrated approach implies studying interaction between various challenges and how people balance health and ill-health, vulnerability and resilience. This requires a mixed-method, interdisciplinary approach as a researcher as well as leadership capacities to give guidance to interdisciplinary research teams. Recently, I obtained a grant from the National Institute of Health Research UK through the Royal Society of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to investigate malaria, other health challenges, coping strategies and opportunities for a coordinated response for street children in Cameroon. I approach the project from a multidisciplinary perspective, combining biological assays with social science and public health methodologies. In addition to investigating the infectious disease burden, I explore their experiences on the street, their ambitions as well as resources they employ to manage said challenges. Such a combination of approaches, give me full picture of the subject matter, and identifies avenues where interventions can come in. The results of my research are published in journals of high impact. In the long term, my plan is to create my own research unit which expands my integrated approach into a major research theme in my institute.