PhD student Seye Abimbola to lead BMJ Global Health
Seye Abimbola, a PhD student at The George Institute for Global Health and the University of Sydney, has been named as Editor-in-Chief of a new journal by the renowned British Medical Journal dedicated to global health.
BMJ Global Health will be an Open Access, online journal dedicated to publishing high-quality peer-reviewed content relevant to those involved in global health, such as policy makers, funders, researchers, clinicians and, crucially, frontline healthcare workers.
A medically qualified public health specialist, Seye spent seven years working to deliver health services and strengthen health systems in Nigeria. From 2009-10, he was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of Sydney where he worked on several projects at The George Institute. In 2007, he was awarded the British Medical Journal Clegg Scholarship and also won the joint Lancet and Global Forum for Health Research Essay Prize for “Young Voices in Research for Health.” In 2010, the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium named him as an “Emerging Voice for Global Health”.
Seye was thrilled to receive the BMJ Global Health appointment. He said: "This role is a great honour and opportunity to expand the scope of global health discussion and debate, by including the voices and realities of people on the ground whose perspectives are often ignored, so that people who are able to help them have the right information to maximise the benefits of their investment and support.”
"I was first approached by BMJ a few months ago to ask if I would be interested in such a position and I leapt at the opportunity. What interests me about global health is that it puts a focus on addressing the needs of disadvantaged people all over the world, and having grown up in Nigeria, I have a personal connection to a lot of the issues."
For his PhD, Seye is studying the governance of primary health care in low- and middle-income countries. He is supported by international scholarships from the Sydney Medical School Foundation and the Rotary Foundation.
In his introductory editorial for BMJ Global Health, he writes: "One of the many things that the global health community is in agreement about is that we really do not know how to define global health – and this is not for want of attempts. My favourite characterisation so far is the description of global health as ‘a collection of problems rather than a discipline’; a collection of problems which ‘turn on the quest for equity’; equity in health indices within and between the national boundaries of high, middle or low-income countries." Read the full editorial.
Seye is currently assembling the journal's editorial team and the first volume is expected to be available in February 2016. The journal's editorial advisory board also includes Professor Anushka Patel, Chief Scientist at The George Institute.
