Uchenna Gwacham-Anisiobi

Biography

Dr Uchenna Gwacham-Anisiobi is Co-Lead for the Maternal & Neonatal Health Module of the MSc in Global Women's Health at the Nuffield Department of Women's & Reproductive Health, University of Oxford, and an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is a physician and public health researcher specialising in maternal and newborn health, reproductive health, and health systems strengthening.

She trained in Medicine at MHAM College of Medicine, Southwestern University Cebu in the Philippines, completed an MPH with distinction at the University of Liverpool, and earned a DPhil in Population Health at Balliol College, University of Oxford, as a Clarendon Scholar. Her doctoral research focused on community-based stillbirth prevention in Imo State, Nigeria, including a 20-hospital case-control study.

Her career spans research, policy, and programme leadership across Africa and South Asia. She played a pivotal role in the Maternal and Newborn Health Quality Improvement (MNHQI) project across 80 facilities in Nigeria (2015–2018), which achieved significant reductions in maternal deaths, neonatal deaths, and stillbirths through innovative quality improvement methods. She also directed a private sector engagement programme involving 51 Catholic hospitals (2018–2019), strengthening facility-level systems through tailored quality improvement approaches. As Public Health Advisor to the Imo State Ministry of Health (through Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation), she supported the Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response Committee, contributed to key state health policies, and provided technical guidance to the Saving One Million Lives programme, embedding evidence-informed practices to strengthen maternal and newborn care delivery.

Uchenna's current fellowship work centres on geospatial analysis of travel time and stillbirth risk in The Gambia, conducted as part of the Google-funded On Tackling In-transit Delays for Mothers in Emergency (OnTIME) project. Drawing on national DHS data and spatial modelling, this work identifies geographical and access barriers to emergency obstetric care. Findings have informed a national policy engagement on perinatal mortality in Banjul and been presented internationally, including at a geospatial symposium in Antwerp. She has also contributed to the BMGF-funded LVASA-SRS (Lagos State Verbal and Social Autopsy Sample Registration System of Maternal Deaths and Stillbirths) and the multicountry Virtual Collaborative on National Coordination of Multisectoral and Multilevel Pandemic Responses during COVID-19. Across these roles, she has led cross-country research collaborations, built local research and health system capacity, translated evidence into actionable policies, and engaged diverse stakeholders to strengthen maternal, newborn, and child health services.

She is also the founder of the Genete Resource Centre for Women, a non-profit leveraging digital platforms to expand maternal health education and peer support; she teaches on LSHTM's MSc in Sexual and Reproductive Health Policy and Programming, and serves on the Editorial Board of BMC Health Services Research.

Research Interests

Uchenna's work focuses on improving reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health through systems-level approaches. Her key areas include:

• Reducing maternal mortality through quality improvement, workforce capacity building, service optimisation, and enhancing the experience of care.
• Preventing stillbirths and neonatal deaths via community interventions, health system strengthening, and integrated perinatal mental health strategies.
• Enhancing child and adolescent health through nutrition, immunisation, early childhood development, and equitable integrated care.
• Expanding access to emergency obstetric care by addressing geographical, socio-economic, and systemic barriers.
• Advancing evidence-informed policy, implementation research, and knowledge translation to drive sustainable RMNCAH improvements and health system resilience.

Her research employs a systems perspective, integrating epidemiology, qualitative methods, and implementation science to generate actionable insights for policy and practice.