Structural and Social Determinants of Aging in Kenya and the United States
Structural and social determinants are the human-created conditions that drive health. From policy to poverty and healthcare access to racism, we experience structural and social determinants of health throughout our life course.
Join us for an enlightening webinar that will discuss these determinants with a focus on how such determinants contribute to dementia risk in Kenya and the United States.
Speakers
Paris "AJ" Adkins-Jackson, PhD MPH, is a multidisciplinary community-partnered health equity researcher and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Dr. AJ's research investigates the role of structural racism on healthy aging for historically marginalized populations like Black and Pacific Islander communities. Her primary project examines the role of life course adverse community-level policing exposure on psychological well-being, cognitive function, and biological aging for Black and Latinx/a/o older adults. Her secondary project tests the effectiveness of an anti-racist multilevel pre-intervention restorative program to increase community health and institutional trustworthiness through multisector community-engaged partnerships.
Dr Muthoni Gichu is the Head of the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the Ministry of Health, Kenya, and an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute, Trinity College Dublin. She has led the development of the Kenya Healthy Ageing Strategy and National Dementia Action Plan, among other policies and guidelines on Healthy Aging and older persons' Health.
Dr Gichu has contributed to developing ICOPE guidelines, a Framework for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Global Action Plan on Physical Activity 2018-2030 (GAPPA), and has contributed to developing several other national policy documents and guidelines. She has a decade of experience in policy development and implementation. Her training is in gerontology, brain health and exercise, and sports science. She has undertaken various research projects on the health and well-being of older persons in Kenya. Dr Gichu is a member of the Alzheimer's Disease International Medical and Scientific Advisory Panel (MSAP) and a co-chair of the WHO-TAG for Measurement, Monitoring, and Evaluation of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing. Dr Gichu is committed to supporting healthy aging and improving the health experiences of older persons in Kenya.
Moderator
Dr. Jacqueline Kagima is a Senior Medical Specialist at Kenyatta National Hospital. She graduated from the University of Nairobi (UoN) School of Medicine with an MD degree in 2007. She completed her internal medicine residency at UoN School of Medicine in 2013. Dr. Kagima pursued a master's in respiratory medicine and a master's in global health research from the University of South Wales and Lancaster University, respectively, in the U.K. She earned her Ph.D. in clinical sciences in December 2022 from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, U.K.
She serves as the secretary of the Respiratory Society of Kenya and the Pan African Thoracic Society (PATS) and is an active member of international medical societies such as the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and the European Respiratory Society (ERS).
Dr. Kagima is proud to be a faculty member of the ATS Methods in Epidemiologic Clinical and Operations Research (MECOR) Program-PATS, which transformed her life as a researcher and provided her with great mentors and opportunities. In 2022, she received the “Job Bwayo Award for Science in Lung Health” from the Respiratory Society of Kenya. Over the years, she has also received the MECOR Graduate Research Award (2014) and several ATS International Trainee Scholarship awards. Her research interests focus on chronic respiratory diseases and their interplay with acute respiratory diseases, particularly in less resourced settings.