CRIBS - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Professor of Obstetrics at King 's College London

Andrew Shennan is Professor of Obstetrics at King's College London, based at St. Thomas' Hospital and is Clinical Director of South London Clinical Research Network. He sits on the UK HTA commissioning board. He is chairman of APEC. He is the current chair of the FIGO Preterm Committee. He leads an NIHR Global Health Research Group, to reduce maternal mortality and build capacity in low income countries. His research interests include interventions to predict and prevent preterm birth, pre-eclampsia and improve global health. He has published over 500 peer reviewed research reports (H index >50). He has an active clinical role in managing high risk obstetric patients, including a regular hands-on labour ward commitment, and a specialist award winning preterm birth surveillance clinic. He is the recipient of the international 2017 Newton Prize for excellence in research and innovation in support of economic development and social welfare in low and middle-income countries. He was awarded an OBE in 2018 for services to maternity care.

Alex is a Senior Registrar in Obstetrics & Gynaecology and Research Fellow at King's College London. She is coordinating the NIHR CRIBS programme of work in Sierra Leone, as well as the first National Scale Up of the CRADLE intervention. The rollout will implement the CRADLE device and training package to all government healthcare facilities in the country, integrating into the national training curricula, maintenance systems and procurement pathways to sustainably strengthen health system capacity. Both feasibility of scale up and impact on maternal and perinatal mortality and maternal morbidity will be assessed in this stepped wedged, hybrid implementation-effectiveness cluster randomised controlled trial (CRADLE 5 https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN94429427).

Job Titles:

• Research Fellow at the Department of Women

Cristina is a research fellow at the Department of Women and Children's Health at the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine at KCL. Her background is in nursing, midwifery and public health with more than fifteen years of clinical and research experience in a wide range of international settings. She is a PRINCE2 practitioner and holds a Diploma in Tropical Nursing, a MPH and a PhD in Public Health. Cristina has expertise in clinical research in tropical and infectious diseases, complex interventions in maternal health, clinical trials and mixed methods implementation research with a focus to improve outcomes, safety and quality of care and reduce health inequalities. She is one of the cofounders of the UK Chagas Hub and a consultant for the WHO supporting the antenatal care portfolio; previously worked as a technical advisor for the WHO CC at PHE, and volunteered for different projects (eg King's Zambia Partnership, Doctors of the World, King's Somaliland Partnerships). Main interests include hybrid trials in global health, implementation and policy, particularly within the area of sexual and reproductive health as well as maternal, child and family health.

Job Titles:

• Consultant

Kate Bramham is a Consultant Nephrologist at King's College Hospital and Senior Clinical Lecturer at King's College London. She is Lead for UK Kidney Disease Africa Genetics group lead and the London Kidney Network Health Inequalities scoping committee. She has authored several original manuscripts and book chapters on renal disease, pregnancy and ethnicity. She is leading several clinical studies and trials in the UK and in Africa to improve detection of early kidney disease using point-of-care approaches, and novel treatments to protect kidney function in people of African ancestry. Kate is passionate about working closely with Black communities to change the trajectory of kidney disease

I am an Obstetrics and Gynaecology Registrar at St Thomas' Hospital. For the last three years I have been doing an Academic Clinical Fellowship and have now taken time out of training to do a PhD. My PhD focuses on evaluation of novel point of care tests in pregnant women to improve triage and referral in Sierra Leone, which has one of the worse maternal mortality rates in the world. The work will include an assessment of a point of care creatinine test in pregnant women with acute kidney injury, a test to predict pre-eclampsia and an evaluation of shock index as a triage tool and predictor of poor outcome in pregnant women who are bleeding.

Job Titles:

• Professor of Women's Social Science and Women's Health at King 's College London

Jane Sandall is a Professor of Women's Social Science and Women's Health at King's College London and currently head of Midwifery and Maternity Research at NHS England and Improvement. She is an NIHR Senior Investigator and has a clinical background in nursing, health visiting and midwifery and an academic background in social sciences. Her research has investigated innovations in how services are delivered to improve safety, quality, and women's experience, and clinical decision tools to prevent maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity in high and low income settings. She is leading research on research to engage women and families in their own safety and open disclosure in perinatal care and looking at how midwife continuity of care may improve quality of care for women at higher risk of pre-term birth and reducing inequalities in care and outcomes for women and babies. Her research findings have informed English, Scottish, US, Brazilian, Irish and Australian reviews of maternity services and WHO. (https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/jane.sandall.html)

Lucy November is a midwife and public health researcher and practitioner with an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Lucy spent several years living in Sierra Leone working with ex-combatant children and was awarded the Wellbeing of Women's international midwifery fellowship for 2017, to study the causes of adolescent maternal mortality in Freetown, based at Kings College London. This research has led to Lucy piloting 2 Young Lives (www.2YoungLives.org), a mentoring scheme for vulnerable pregnant teenagers there, for which she is now working with a team from Kings on a pilot cluster RCT. Lucy has also been funded by the Sir Halley Stewart Trust to research the training and support needs of parent-and-child foster carers in the UK and has developed a range of resources (www.fosteringhope.co.uk) and grown an extensive network of practitioners in this speciality.

Prince Tommy Williams, Lifeline Nehemiah Projects (LNP) is the Community Engagement and Involvement (CEI) lead for CRIBS. LNP was set up as an organic response to the 10 year civil war with the purpose of rebuilding the lives of ex-child soldiers and young people affected by war. Prince joined LNP as one of the beneficiaries in the 1990s and over the past 24 years, served in various roles before becoming Executive Director in 2019. He is passionate about engaging and empowering communities, and took the lead during the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, working with LNP, Medair and Oxfam to engage in community education, radio talk shows, supporting quarantined households, and establishing an Ebola treatment centre at one of the outbreak epicentres in Kuntorloh. He was a 2011 Commonwealth Professional Fellow and was featured in the Common Knowledge Issue. Common Knowledge Issue #3 by Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK - Issuu