Principal Investigators
Maricianah Onono, MB ChB, MS, PhD, M.Med (Phych) is a Medical Doctor, Senior Principal Clinical Research Scientist, and Acting Director of Scientific Programs, Partnerships, and Grants Management at Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). She oversees the development and execution of multi-site clinical trials. Her focus areas include HIV/AIDS, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Family Planning, Cervical Cancer, Pneumonia, Diarrhea, and Malaria in Children Under 5, and the impact of water and food insecurity on the Sexual and Reproductive Health of HIV-positive adolescent girls and young women and their infants.
Jennifer Velloza, PhD, MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Global Health and Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Her research, teaching, and mentoring focus on advancing the field of global mental health and the intersection with HIV and STI prevention specifically for adolescent girls and young women. She uses implementation science, epidemiology, and behavioral science methods to design, evaluate, and scale-up integrated psychotherapy and HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) delivery models.
Sheri Weiser, MD, MPH, MA, is a Professor of Medicine and internist at UCSF Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Her research focuses on the impact of food insecurity, extreme weather events, and other social and structural factors on treatment outcomes for HIV and other chronic diseases both domestically and internationally. She also evaluates sustainable food insecurity and livelihood interventions to improve health. She is an MPI for Vijana Shamba and a co-investigator on Mama Shamba.
Co-Investigators
Elizabeth Bukusi, MBChB, M.Med, MPH, PhD, PGD, MBE is the Chief Research Officer at the KEMRI, a Research Professor in the University of Washington, an honorary lecturer at Aga Khan University in Nairobi, and Volunteer faculty at the UCSF. Her research focuses on sexually transmitted infections, reproductive health, and HIV prevention, care, and treatment. She has a keen interest in research and clinical ethics, and regulatory systems.
Amy Conroy, PhD is a behavioral scientist with multidisciplinary training in public health, psychology, and relationship science. Her expertise focuses on couples and family-based approaches to understand and intervene upon health behaviors such as engagement in HIV care and treatment, alcohol use, intimate partner violence, and mental health. Her research is grounded in relationship science theory and employs mixed-methods and innovative dyadic analysis techniques (qualitative and quantitative) to understand dyad-level health behavior.
Jason Nagata, MD, MSc is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He leads lab group at UCSF that uses epidemiology and data science methods to examine the downstream effects of adolescent behaviors to inform clinical and public health guidance. His research interest include adolescent health and medicine, parent-adolescent interventions, and food insecurity and nutritional health among adolescents.
Coordination Team
Rachel Burger, MHS is the UCSF study manager for both Vijana and Mama Shamba. She has seventeen years of experience conducting public health research in East Africa. Her research focus includes global mental health, the integration of livelihood interventions to improve health outcomes, and the integration of HIV and sexual and reproductive health services.
Evans Mikera is the Agriculture Training Coordinator for Vijana Shamba.
Khadija Nanga is the Study Psychologist for Vijanah Shamba
Fredrick Ochieng is the Laboratory Manager for Vijana Shamba.
Kevin Okoth is the Program Finance Manager for Vijana Shamba.
Christine Oray is the Study Nurse for Vijana Shamba.
Elly Weke, MS is the KEMRI Study Manager for both Vijana and Mama Shamba. He has a MS in Integrated Water Resources Management, and he is a doctoral student in Agronomy at Maseno University. His PhD dissertation project is embedded in Vijana and Mama Shamba. Elly has seven years of experience managing Shamba Maisha studies in Kisumu, Migori, and Homa Bay Counties, Kenya.