Leila Abdullahi

Leila Hussein Abdullahi completed her MPH at UCT in 2012, and began full-time study towards her PhD which she obtained in July 2019 at UCT.

Leila’s thesis focused on immunisation of adolescents, a group that do not derive optimal public health benefits from such a program. Absence of structured programs to vaccinate this population group, particularly in Low- and Middle- Income countries (LMICs), is the main reason for sub-optimal uptake. For her PhD, she conducted a mixed methods evidence synthesis approach to understand the obstacles and likely solutions needed to improve adolescent immunisation in LMICs. One of the main findings is that interventions that include health education may be most successful when implemented in combination with others that address multiple factors. In addition, the challenges, experiences and lessons learnt from the pilot studies of recent HPV vaccination introduction programmes are extremely useful and should be seen as an ideal platform to build adolescent vaccination programmes more generally. Overall, these studies will be useful to inform policy makers on the dynamics associated with uptake of vaccines among adolescents.