Tolullah Oni | |
|---|---|
 Oni speaks at the World Economic Forum in 2018 | |
| Born | |
| Alma mater | University College London Imperial College London |
| Known for | International health |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Cape Town University of Cambridge |
Tolullah "Tolu" Oni (born 1980) is a Nigerian urban epidemiologist at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. [1] She is a NextEinstein Forum Fellow [2] and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. [3]
Oni was born in Lagos. [4] At the age of seven Oni watched a documentary about cardiac surgery and wanted to become a pediatric cardiac surgeon. [5] [6] She attended boarding school. [7] She trained in medicine with international health at University College London, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in 2001. [7] She completed house jobs in the United Kingdom and Australia, and became interested in HIV. [5] She was made president of the Medical Students' Union. [7] Oni was a doctoral student at Imperial College London, where she started to study health outcomes. [8] [9] She explored how social determinants impacted health conditions, and finished her PhD in 2012. [10] [11] Oni was awarded the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Medical Student Elective Prize, and moved to South Africa. [7]
Oni worked in South Africa, where she established an interdisciplinary program Research Initiative for Cities Health and Equity (RICHE) at the University of Cape Town in 2007. [12] RICHE works on urban health, identifying opportunities to implement public health policies in fast growing cities. [13] She worked as a registrar in the Western Cape Department of Health. [14] She became interested in interventions that can manage chronic infections and non-communicable diseases. [5] [15] Oni was made a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town. [10] Here, she developed the University of Cape Town's first undergraduate degree in global health, which launched in 2014. [16] The course created by Oni is one of the first to teach global health from the perspective of the Global South. [5]
She moved to the University of Cambridge, where she joined the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit as a senior research fellow. [17] [18] Here she is a member of the Global Diet and Activity Research Group and Network (GDAR) network, which works to prevent non-communicable diseases in low-income countries. [19]
Oni has presented at the United Nations, the World Health Organization and World Economic Forum. [20] [21] [22] Oni is a board of Future Earth and the African Academy of Sciences platform for open research. [23] Oni is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, and was elected a Fellow of NextEinstein in 2015 and the Stellenbosch University Institute for Advanced Study in 2017. [10] [24] [25] [26] She was elected one of the Co-Chairs of the Global Young Academy in 2018. [4] Oni serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban Health and The Lancet's Planetary Health. [23] [27] She has written for The Conversation. [28] Oni serves as a judge for the Nature Inspiring Science Award. [29]
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