Dr. Roisin Drysdale

Roisin Drysdale is a public health researcher whose work centers on adolescent health, nutrition, and wellbeing in sub-Saharan Africa. Closely involved in multi-country school-based collaborations such as the ARISE Network, her research spans South Africa, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Burkina Faso, with a strong emphasis on urban and peri-urban contexts. Her scholarship bridges epidemiology, implementation science, and health systems research.

Her publications highlight key challenges facing young adolescents, including anaemia, overweight and obesity, diet quality, food insecurity, and school health environments. She has examined how structural factors such as poverty, drought, hygiene infrastructure, and school food environments shape nutritional and developmental outcomes. This body of work demonstrates particular strength in large-scale survey design, cross-country comparative analysis, and policy-relevant evidence generation.

Drysdale has also contributed to research on mental health, digital access, and the indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents and maternal-child outcomes. Her findings on school belonging, low birthweight, and male partner involvement in antenatal care reflect a holistic perspective on health across the life course. Overall, her work advances contextually grounded interventions to improve adolescent and child health in resource-constrained settings.