Regional Vice President Spotlight Sub-Saharan Africa - March 2024
Adesola Olumide is a Professor and Consultant Community Physician at the Institute of Child Health, University of Ibadan and University College Hospital, Ibadan Nigeria. She obtained her Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from the University of Ibadan (UI) in Nigeria and undertook residency training in Community Medicine/Public Health in University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. On completion of residency training, she was employed as a Medical Research Fellow and Consultant Physician at the Institute of Child Health, UI and UCH, Ibadan and was given the responsibility of coordinating the Adolescent Health component of the MPH programme in Child and Adolescent Health run by the Institute of Child Health. Olumide oversaw the Institute of Child Health infant welfare/well-child clinic from 2014 until 2017 when she was appointed Acting Director of the Institute; a position she held from 2017 to July 2019. Currently, she is the Director of the College of Medicine, Research, and Innovation Management unit.
Olumide’s research interests are in adolescent and young people’s medicine and health. She has served as PI and co-PI on several national and multi-centre studies covering communicable and non-communicable conditions and risk behaviours among adolescents and young people. She has a keen interest in using mobile technologies in adolescent research and interventions, and in the use of participatory action methods (including photovoice, community mapping and data walk) in research. She was a commissioner on the WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission – “A future for the world’s children?” and is a commissioner on the current 2nd Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing.
As the International Association for Adolescent Health Regional Vice President for Sub-Saharan Africa, Olumide also serves as the IAAH liaison to the UNESCO Chair, Global Health and Education She is the President-elect of the Society for Adolescent and Young People’s Health in Nigeria (SAYPHIN) and is a member of the National Technical Working Group for Adolescent and Young People’s Health in Nigeria where she chairs the Technical Quality Delivery sub-committee. In this capacity, Olumide provides technical support on adolescent and young people’s health and wellbeing to the Gender, Adolescent School Health, and Elderly Care (GASHE) Division under the Family Health Department in the Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria. She serves as the sectional leader of the teenage section of her local church in Ibadan, Nigeria and is passionate about building the next generation of researchers in adolescent medicine and health.