Alison Krentel* PhD MSc BA

Biography

Alison Krentel completed her postgraduate studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine receiving her PhD in Public Health (2008) and her MSc in Public Health in Developing Countries (1999). She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa, a scientist at Bruyère Research Institute, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Knowledge Translation, Technology Assessment for Health Equity. Alison is one of the founding members and current chair of the Canadian Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (www.cnntd.org).

Alison’s main area of research interest and expertise involves understanding and facilitating community acceptance of new health initiatives for the control and elimination of infectious diseases, specifically neglected tropical diseases. She is interested in identifying ways to improve community participation in public health programmes, understanding patterns of non-participation and crafting mixed methods research and interventions to improve uptake. Alison worked with the DOLF research group at Washington University in St. Louis (as part of a multinational team to assess the safety, efficacy and acceptability of a new treatment regimen for lymphatic filariasis in five countries, leading the acceptability study across the five sites). Her current research portfolio involves understanding the motivations and stressors faced by community health workers and how to build more supportive community programs to enhance their performance. She is one of the lead PIs for a study understanding the transition to scale of proven interventions to address female genital schistosomiasis (FGS) in Ghana and Madagascar (the FAST Package). More details about her research can be found at the Threads Lab website: https://www.thethreadslab.org/