Meet the Team
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Dr Melvina Woode Owusu
Founder & Director of Research and Evaluation
Melvina is a medical anthropologist and translational epidemiologist with expertise in inclusive research and evaluation spanning 15 years. Over the past 10 years, Melvina has delivered and directed organisation and cultural change programmes ​Melvina holds an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at UCL's Centre for Population Research in Sexual Health and HIV where leads Programme Management, Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) and Co-production on within several NIHR-funded studies, exceeding £3M in grant funding.
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In addition to her academic work, Melvina has extensive experience across public health surveillance, policy and practice:
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international (EACS, WHO, ECDC, UNAIDS, EURO-URHIS2)
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national (UKHSA (formerly, PHE) and HQIP) research, surveillance and guidance development and implementation and
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local sexual health promotion (CNWL Trust), designing and implementing services to address the needs of racially minoritised communities.
Recent publications include:
Melvina is also a Trustee on the Board for the Race Equality Foundation where she provides expertise on inclusive research practice and sits on the Management Sub-Committee. Further, Melvina has been a Fellow at the RSA - the royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce.
​In her spare time, Melvina is an enthusiastic amateur photographer and enjoys interior design and yoga.
Dr Stephanie Steels
Senior Research and Evaluation Consultant
Stephanie is a public health researcher with international project and programme management experience in health and social care research. With over fifteen years of research and evaluation experience, Stephanie specialises in creating bespoke theories of change, monitoring and evaluation frameworks to extract key learning and behavioural insights into digital and e-health information systems and supporting organisational change.
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Previously she was Head of Evaluation of the award-winning Connected Health Cities (CHC), a global programme for the implementation of Learning Health Systems and is the CIO of Applied Health Insights UK enabling international health system leaders to drive front line change through the better use of data.
Stephanie enjoys travelling, world cuisine and teaching yoga to her students in Japan.
Mike O'Driscoll
Senior Research and Evaluation Consultant
Mike is a social and market researcher with a broad knowledge of research strategies, methods and project management gained through postgraduate study, professional development and through more than 25 years' professional experience in academic, third sector and local government settings. Alongside his academic work, Mike provides social and market research consultancy across a wide range of organisations from large multinational corporations, through to SMEs, museums and charities. His principal research interests are in inequalities in higher education and health services, and the evaluation of services (particularly in health and education) using quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods approaches with particular expertise in survey design and analysis.
Mike is also the co-founder and trustee of a charity 'Diversity in Development' which aims to increase the proportion of people from diverse backgrounds who develop careers in the international development sector.
Emma Harvey
Communications and Project Manager
Emma has over 20 years administrative and project management experience, working across various charitable and not for profit organisations. Emma is extremely organised with excellent administration skills with vast experience in managing and supporting programmes as well as utilising her IT and creative skills with website management, graphic design and communications work.
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As well as looking after a rescue dog, Emma is a practising visual artist and takes part in regular exhibitions in London and around the UK.
Liana Owusu
Communications and Project Assistant
Liana is currently studying for her higher-level International Baccalaureate diploma in Social and Cultural Anthropology, History and French. She has experience of planning and delivering public and patient involvement and engagement activities with young people in the UK and administration in College Sainte Veronique, Liege, Belgium, engaging them in research and public service development projects. Her research interests include matters of social justice and international relations. Passionate about fostering inclusivity and understanding amongst her student body, she is a proud member of the Diversity and Inclusion panel.
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Liana enjoys playing tennis, listening to live music, and travelling with friends.
