Emelda A Okiro

Emelda Aluoch Okiro (born 1977) is a Kenyan public health researcher who is lead of the Population Health Unit at the Kenya Medical Research Institute–Wellcome Trust program in Kenya. She looks to understand the determinants of health transitions and to evaluate access to health information. She is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.

Early life and education Okiro was born in Kenya, one of nine siblings. She went to school in Nairobi and Kitale. She collected data in Kilifi, where almost twenty thousand infants a year are hospitalised from RSV-induced pneumonia. She moved to the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, where she worked on the Access, Bottlenecks, Costs and Equity (ABCE) project.

Research and career Okiro worked as a program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she was based in the Global Health Team. She studied the impact of malaria control and anti-retroviral programs, and was responsible for setting up and coordinating the Malaria Modelling Consortium. She is investigating the epidemiology of malaria, and works to strengthen the use of health data in policy making. She is interested in the spatial heterogeneity of child survival across Kenya. That year she was made professor.

Selected publications

Personal life Okiro is on the International Advisory Board of The Lancet.