PHASA Fellowship Awarded to Silinganisiwe Padline Dzumbunu

The CSSR and AARHub team is proud to announce that a prestigious Public Health Association of South Africa (PHASA) Fellowship has been awarded to AARHub researcher Silinganisiwe Padline Dzumbunu.

Silinganisiwe is one of ten students from different universities around South Africa who were selected to be part of the Public Health Association of South Africa 2022 annual conference mentoring programme. As part of this programme, she had the opportunity to network with a public health leaders including Professor Karim and Professor Salim Abdool Karim and the PHASA President: Dr Harsha Somoroo at the PHASA 2022 conference. Through out the year, until the next PHASA conference, she will be attending monthly meetings aimed to help the fellows learn more about public health advocacy and advancing global public health lessons. 

When asked about the insights gained from the PHASA 2022 conference, Silinganisiwe responded: The Covid-19 pandemic has provided crucial lessons we need to start applying to global challenges such as the climate crisis. Amongst the most important lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic is that no one is safe until everyone is safe. The climate emergency demands action from all of us, everyone has a role to play and we need to start acting with the same sense of agency we had for Covid-19. The effects of climate change are already devastating, with extreme weather events displacing communities and a rise in chronic diseases which reduce our ability to lead full and healthy lives. 

Silinganisiwe Dzumbunu is a quantitative researcher at the Accelerate Hub and doctoral student in Demography at the University of Cape Town. Her research explores the relationship between adolescent empowerment and sexual and reproductive health outcomes, and on identifying interventions that accelerate SDG achievement, including reproductive health, outcomes among African adolescents.