Dr Hellen Barsosio

IMPROVE 2 Trial Manager

Hellen is a Kenyan medical doctor who joined the IMPROVE consortium in October 2017 as the Trial Manager and Principal Investigator for the IMPROVE 2 clinical trial. The trial will form part of her PhD work and is expected to run from March 2019 to December 2020. Hellen is based in KEMRI, Kisumu under the Malaria branch, where she manages IMPROVE trial in Kenya  and IMPROVE 2 trial in Kenya and Malawi. The Kenyan trial sites are located in the following hospitals: Homa Bay County Referral Hospital, Ahero County Hospital and Rabuor sub-county hospital.

Hellen did her medical training in Kenya and her masters training in the UK; she recently graduated from the University of Oxford with an Msc International Health and Tropical Medicine. Prior to joining us, Hellen worked as a clinical research training fellow at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust, Kilifi within the maternal and newborn health research group. In this position, she was the clinical lead and co-investigator of the Kilifi Perinatal and Maternal Health Research Programme (KIPMAT), and the Kilifi-site Principal Investigator for two multi-country observational studies: Group B Streptococcus Multicentre Study and Interbio-21^st follow up study. While in Kilifi, Hellen contributed her technical expertise internationally to the World Health Organisation (WHO) Maternal Morbidity Technical Working Group. Nationally, she sits in the maternal and newborn health technical working group, the prevention of mother to child transmission technical working group, the HIV care and treatment technical working group and recently the malaria in pregnancy technical working group.  

In her words Hellen “Is drawn to research that aims to make a real difference in the lives of women and their children in low-middle income countries such a IMPROVE trials” and “is excited to learn alongside the IMPROVE consortium team.”