Farewell to Dr Olive Kobusingye, Distinguished Fellow, retiring from academia
Dr Olive Kobusingye, a renowned trauma surgeon, injury researcher, writer and Distinguished Fellow of The George Institute for Global Health, is retiring from academia at the end of the year.
Olive’s passion for ‘turning a patient’s life around’ drew her to investigating ways of tracking burdens in her home country of Uganda, which then led her and her team to create a hospital trauma registry - the first of its kind in East Africa. Her work has helped create change in the field of injury in many low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Africa.
Olive has used her considerable expertise in injury and trauma to collaborate with The George Institute on many different studies over several years. These have included the BabyBox child injury prevention study in Uganda and associated training programme; analysis of the drowning epidemic in South East Asia, and transport and health post COVID; and the Step Safely package, a guidance report from the WHO on best practices to reduce falls for which TGI did the systematic review.
Holding roles as Director of the Trauma, Injuries and Disability Programme at the Makerere School of Public Health, and Board Chair, Road Traffic Injuries Research Network, has enabled Olive to express her views and interest in topics ranging from the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims and UKRI funding cuts.
Adding to her existing collaborations with The George Institute in injury prevention, Olive has been a Distinguished Fellow since 2019. As such, she has contributed to increased understanding of building collaborations and navigating system challenges in different settings, and has facilitated conversations with colleagues across Africa, including through the Institute’s Africa Engagement Initiative and Tea with Africa webinar series.
We are grateful for Olive’s passion for sharing knowledge, her collaborative spirit, and her contribution to capacity strengthening. While she may be retiring from academia at the end of 2022, Olive will be keeping busy. Among her plans are continuing with non-academic writing (she is now working on her third book!) and a project that she and her husband started 20 years ago, which began as a tree-planting exercise and (like the trees) has grown and evolved over time (The Great Outdoors Uganda).
