The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Edmore Marinda as a research director at the Research and Impact Assessment (RIA) unit effective 1 June 2016. He will head monitoring and evaluation in RIA.
Dr Marinda holds a PhD in Biostatics at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits). Before joining the HSRC, Dr Marinda was a technical director and advisor for a health consulting organisation, Health Info-Matrix. Among his achievements is receiving the Faculty of Health Sciences 2012 award from Wits for an article entitled Mother to child transmission of HIV among Zimbabwean women who sero-converted postnatally: Prospective cohort study, published in the British Medical Journal in 2012.
In the same year, the article was recognised as one of the top 10 articles focusing on early childhood development by the Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development, and the Strategic Knowledge Cluster on Early Child Development.
‘His specialist expertise in monitoring and evaluation and learning (MEL) significantly increases RIA’s capacity i and complements existing competencies in other HSRC programmes. He’s a biostatistician with keen research interests in social science research and public policy — a rare combination well suited to the assessment of the outcomes approach in government,’ says RIA’s executive director Dr Temba Masilela.
With over two decades experience in the fields of HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, nutrition and child growth, Dr Marinda has supported and worked with specialists ranging from medical doctors, epidemiologists, social scientists, health economists, education experts, developmental specialists and other biostatisticians. Over the years, he has involved himself in a number of projects. He is currently involved in the South African Global Fund grant-making application, which will run from 2016 and conclude in 2019. Other ventures include the Social Behaviour Change Communication programme in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa, and initiatives funded by international organisations USAID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UK’s Department for International Development, and the World Bank.
In addition, he has over 30 peer-reviewed publications under his belt. These have been published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (JAIDS), AIDS, the International Journal of Nutrition, the International Journal of Epidemiology and Plos One, to name but a few. Dr Marinda is also a member of the Health and Development Africa executive committee, sits on a panel of experts that reviewed the South African National HIV Prevalence, Incidence and Behavior Survey in 2012, and is part of the University of Witwatersrand’s Medical School Committees for post-graduates, plagiarism and ICT.